


Pictures of Egypt

by akamarykate



Category: Early Edition (TV)
Genre: 90s tech, Dopplegangers, Friendship, Friendship Is The Best Ship, Gen, Multidimensional Hijinks, Novel, Parallel Universes, Post-Season/Series 02, Shaky Quantum Shenanigans, literal alternate universe, platonic love story, so many dopplegangers, this is what you get for messing with the multiverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-02-15 15:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 195,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18672895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamarykate/pseuds/akamarykate
Summary: "The universe has never really made things in ones."~Neil deGrasse TysonTakes place in the summer of 1998, immediately following season 2.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, if you're coming into this fic as someone who knows me online, you've probably heard me talk about the Long Thing off and on over the course of a few years*. This is that Long Thing. I'm not going to do a lot of explaining here, in the hope the story stands on its own, but there will be some notes at the end, and I'd be _thrilled_ to talk about the story, the writing process, the fandom, the show, the characters, any of it, in comments, email, and in Dreamwidth or Tumblr spaces. 
> 
> (*"A few"=at least twelve. Twelve. Years. There was a lot of off and on but this was always haunting my writer brain. Twelve years in which I got an MFA, started and ran a small business, acquired two niecephews via birth and three via a brother's second marriage, and moved 500 miles, among other life events. In fannish terms, I've been working on this thing longer than the eleven-year run of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.)
> 
> The one thing I do want to say before we get started is that while I'm posting it as a WIP, so I only have to format and double check a few chapters at a time, it is, in fact, finished. If life intervenes and I don't post for a day or so, rest assured that I will be back and I will get the whole thing posted. The chapters vary in length because I was trying to strike a balance between making them work for readers and making them happen in spots that make story sense. It also, for me anyway, adds to the whole "Throwback to the Nineties" feeling I'm trying to capture with this story; those of you who were around then may remember how we'd post our fic bit by bit to mailing lists, back when our email servers couldn't handle more than a few thousand words at a time.
> 
> * * * * *
> 
> Thanks go to everyone in this fandom who's encouraged, inspired, and kept the fandom flame burning over the course of those twelve years by creating fanworks and sharing chats about the show, including the BiCs, the GTA, Amilyn, Jaded_Girl_83, OldToadWoman, and TheOnlySPL, among others.
> 
> Thanks isn't a big enough word for JayneL/serrico, who put up with twelve years of emails about this story, beta'd it every single time I said, "I'm almost done!" and brought writing chops and character insight to bear on every scene. I'm so, so grateful for your help and your friendship. This story simply wouldn't exist without you.

_I've been painting pictures of Egypt_  
_Leaving out what it lacks_  
_The future feels so hard and I want to go back_  
_~Sara Groves_

* * *

"These qubits exist in superposition, unlike classical bits, which exist as ones and zeroes. Feynman realized this would mean an exponential increase in computing speed and power…"

Gary tapped the stylus against his Palm Pilot. He hadn't planned to spend all day at the Gleacher Center listening to some egghead drone on about theoretical physics, but like it or not, it was part of his job. Seats creaked from all sides of the lecture hall; Gary wasn't the only one impatient for Dr. Stinton to stop diagramming formulae on the white board and cut to the chase. Most of the audience were investors anxious to hear about applications his new technology could make possible. Rumor had it quantum computers would be a bigger advance than any tech that had come before. 

Gary's cell phone buzzed. He snuck a look: three new messages, all from the last person he wanted to talk to. He slipped it back into his pocket.

"All that remains is to find a sufficiently efficient source of energy to power the flipping of the bits." Dr. Stinton turned to face his audience, tossing back the shock of greying hair that kept flopping in his face. "Now that we've solved the worst of the decoherence and are maintaining it at close to acceptable levels, this dream is very close indeed to becoming a reality."

A hand shot up. "Terry Quilling with Abrams and Miller," said the young man a few rows down. Gary rolled his eyes. Quilling was a guppy who thought he was shark. "Exactly how close are you?"

"Way to tip your hand," Gary muttered, but he watched Stinton carefully. He saw the quirk of a smile at one corner of the professor's mouth, something Quilling missed because he'd dropped his pen. As much as Marcia might have complained about poker nights at Chuck's back in the day, they'd taught Gary to spot tells. Stinton's were clear from twelve rows back.

"We aren't at liberty to give exact specifications." Stinton blinked at a handful of guys in dark suits in the third row, obvious government types. He looked back at Quilling as he finished. "But we believe the breakthrough will come within the next five years. In fact, we've designed a simulation to show you how a quantum computer would work." He punched a few buttons on the laptop, and green and yellow lights blinked all over the black box connected to it. He plugged a series of cords that ran from outlets under the board into the back of the box, connecting it to a projector. Numbers flew onto the clean half of the white board, turning it into a giant monitor. "This presentation is pre-programmed, of course. The mainframe down on the Hyde Park campus took two months to perform these calculations. A quantum computer would finish them in a heartbeat."

The stuff flashing on the board was all Greek to Gary, some of it literally so, but he understood what it meant. The power to encrypt, decode, and predict beyond the Department of Defense's wildest dreams was within reach, and someone was going to make a fortune on it. Not in five years. That was a cover up to keep the amateurs at bay. He'd bet his salary what he'd seen was real, and Stinton was fishing for investors who'd take the leap without a safety net. 

A quick glance around the room told him the other key players were still trying to make up their minds. They'd missed the signs completely. Except maybe Stephanie Chambers, the rep from Keystone Capital. She was sharp, and her hand was going for her phone. Gary hit speed dial on his own cell.

"Phil," he whispered when his boss answered, "I know you've been calling, but I had to find out what Stinton has…Of course we're still ahead of everyone else. Would I let you down? This guy's made some kind of breakthrough. We have to get to him before the DOD hushes him up. They're here, too. How much are we in for?...No, I'm telling you, add another zero…Yeah, it's all about encryption. Computer hackers, decoders, the CIA, they'll go nuts for this stuff. So how much?...I think our investors will be very pleased. Oh, c'mon, you know I can talk them into it after the fact." He entered the figure Pritchard finally coughed up into his Palm Pilot, then deleted it and entered a new number, several thousand dollars larger. Marcia would freak; they'd just bought the house. But in the end it could mean paying off their mortgage a decade ahead of schedule.

Gary turned his attention to the front of the lecture hall. Stinton had finished and was talking quietly with a few of his students, resting a possessive hand on top of the black box. It worked, and it was going to change the world. More importantly, it was going to make several somebodies a lot of money, and one somebody a fat commission.

He started down the steps toward the stage. The government goons were gone. Everyone else was packing up, except for Stephanie Chambers, who was headed down the steps at the other end of the aisle of seats. Their eyes met, and they both sped up. Gary had two advantages: longer legs and no heels. He called to the professor as he hit the last step. "Dr. Stinton, my investors are very interested in your machine."

"Ignore him!" Chambers shouted from the other side. "We have a better offer."

Gary opened his mouth to argue, but he was interrupted by a weird silver flash, then a blur of plaid and a thump on his shoulder. He landed hard on one knee and his cell phone and briefcase went flying. "Damn!" He fumbled for the phone, but it was as if the air had gone too thick for his hand to move through it. The guy who'd tripped him was gone without an apology, let alone a hand up. But a couple of the students reached down to help Gary. 

"Where'd you come from?" one asked, a young man in a short-sleeved oxford shirt and thick-rimmed glasses. He couldn't have been more cliché if he'd stepped out of an eighties teen movie. 

"A few rows up. Thanks." 

Another kid handed him his briefcase and phone. "Wow, this must be a new model, huh?" 

"Sure," Gary slipped it into his pocket. No way he wanted a pair of students getting a peek at his contact list. 

They watched him warily, as if he was some sort of creature from one of the science fiction shows they no doubt loved. Gary ignored them. It was the professor who mattered, and luckily he was alone at the table. No sign of Stephanie Chambers. Gary held out his hand. "Gary Hobson, Strauss and Associates. Dr. Stinton, we're very interested in your project here and—" He paused, blinking at the dilapidated laptop on the table.

"What happened to your quantum computer?"

* * * * *

"This your idea of a joke?" Gary gestured to the sign outside the lecture hall: "SCIENCE FOR MBA STUDENTS: TOMORROW'S TECHNOLOGY TODAY." Cat stared at him, unblinking.

"'A man was injured when he fell down the steps of a second floor lecture hall yesterday afternoon,'" Gary read from his copy of the _Sun-Times_. "'Witnesses said the man tried to stop a confrontation between two attendees at the end of a presentation on applications of theoretical physics.' Who gets into a fight about physics?" he asked Cat. 

Only Gary's life could be this ridiculous. He'd managed exactly one physics course in college, and that had been fifteen years ago. "You know what these guys do for fun? They put cats in boxes and try to guess if they're alive or dead." He hauled open the big wooden door, and Cat strutted into the lecture hall, head held high. "Yeah, I know, you'd be elsewhere." Actually, the fact Cat was here was probably a sign Gary had been right to come. He'd thought about skipping the story, since the injury wasn't serious, but he was in the neighborhood and it was easier than going back and dealing with Marissa's demands. 

To be fair, she wasn't the one making demands. The paper and McGinty's made the demands. Marissa merely called attention to them. He probably owed her an apology for the way he'd reacted to that today, but he'd been overwhelmed by both sets of demands for weeks now. She'd proved she knew that by being gentler with him than he deserved. 

So yeah, he definitely owed her an apology. But right now, he had a nerd fight to deal with.

He took a cushioned seat in the back row, and Cat curled up on the floor at his feet. These seats were much nicer than the wooden chairs he remembered from his college days, and they were lined up behind gleaming wide desks that ran the length of each row, complete with plugs for laptops. Most of the attendees were taking notes on their own computers. Up front, the professor the _Sun-Times_ article identified as "world-renowned physicist Dr. Edward Stinton" droned on about quantum particles and M-theories. The M seemed to stand for magic, mystery, or something else entirely. Gary's money was on mumbo-jumbo. The only parts of the talk he could understand sounded like science fiction: reality as membranes, parallel universes, extra dimensions. None of it explained Cat or the paper, so he tuned it out, searching instead for cantankerous people who might cause trouble. 

The audience consisted of two distinct groups. The upper rows of the lecture hall were filled with men and women in business wear, neatly trimmed and pressed, while the students in the first few rows wore jeans and t-shirts. Except for his age and his complete cluelessness about higher level mathematics, Gary would have blended in more with the latter group. He didn't miss wearing a suit and tie every day, and he absolutely didn't miss answering to Phil Pritchard. Those things got in the way of finding lost kids and stopping purse snatchings, both of which he'd done that morning. That the paper had helpfully sandwiched a photo of his ex-wife between the articles, along with a notice that she'd just become the youngest attorney to be named a full partner at Gutzman and Haverford—now Gutzman, Haverford, and Roberts—shouldn't have made a difference to Gary's day, and for the most part it hadn't. But it hadn't helped his mood much either.

He slouched against the padded seat, resisting the temptation to put his feet up on the desk. He'd been going since six-thirty and had at least one more story to deal with before he went home for good. Once upon a time, back when he'd been married and thought home was something he and Marcia were building together, he'd looked forward to going home. Now, with the constant pressure of the next day's paper and running the bar without Chuck, home, any kind of normal home that he should have achieved by the age of thirty-three, was nowhere near his grasp. Case in point: these days he took most of his meals out in the bar or at his desk in the tiny office he shared with Marissa, as he had today. It had given her the perfect opportunity to start questioning him about quarterly payroll taxes and new hires before she'd tried to dig deeper into the issues facing the bar and, by extension, him. 

"I know you've been especially busy since—" She'd paused, as if she was about to say something she knew Gary didn't want to hear. But that had never stopped her before. "—since Chuck left," she finished after making a little noise in her throat. "But McGinty's needs looking after, too. You're not the only one he left in the lurch."

"Chuck didn't leave us in the lurch." He said it too quickly, probably because he was trying to convince himself it was true. "Everything will be okay."

"Not if we don't straighten out these taxes. And what about the scholarship fund for our employees?" She'd been on him about that since he'd lured her to work at McGinty's with a promise to match the money Strauss and Associates had put toward her classes at Northwestern. Covering her tuition had been easy enough to do, but she wanted to extend the program to everyone who worked for them, which required putting funds in the right places, not to mention paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork.

"I'll sort that stuff out tonight."

"Sure, if you're here, and in a good mood, and not passed out over there from exhaustion." She indicated the low couch currently occupied by her guide dog, with a wave of her hand. 

"You saying you can't count on me?"

"I'm saying I'm worried about you."

"So what else is new?" He took a slurp of his tomato soup through her pause, which was long enough to let him know he'd crossed a line. What he said next didn't make things better. "Look, I know you worry about me. I appreciate it, I really do."

"You could prove that by letting me help with the paper once in a while."

"You do help."

"How?"

"By running things here. And by worrying."

"Gary." She let the weight of everything she was choosing not to say fall between them before she went on. "You know I don't have any experience running a bar. If you'd let me help with the paper, you'd have more time for your responsibilities here."

"I know you want to help. But you don't know what it's like out there."

"Not for lack of trying. Which is my point."

He wasn't sure exactly what her point was. He should have asked. She'd left it wide open. But he was tired, and that made him stubborn. So instead, he said, "Yeah, well, it's not like I can have you run around the city taking care of the paper, is it?"

"You asked Chuck to do that all the time."

"Yeah, but Chuck was—" He wasn't sure what he could say that wouldn't get him into more trouble. And there was something he needed to admit to himself about Chuck—and, to be honest, about himself—lurking in this conversation. It made his arms itch, but he didn't have the words to finish the sentence. 

Forcing Marissa into finishing it for him was as big a misstep as anything he might have said. She sat back in her chair, arms crossed. "Chuck is a white man who can see."

"That is not what I was going to say. You know me better than that." And she did, of course, but even in the depths of his crankiness Gary knew her patience had its limits. She pressed her lips together and waited while he struggled for the right words.

What he _should_ have said, he realized now, was that Chuck wanted it too much. He wanted to take the power the paper offered and use it for his own ends in ways Marissa would never dream of. At the time Gary hadn't quite worked that out. Instead, he'd stepped over yet another line by mentioning her stint in the hospital that spring. Her face had clouded over and she'd said something about making her own choices and living her own life. Just like Chuck was busy doing out in California.

"What about my life?" Gary asked, knowing how petulant he sounded. But he figured he had a right to complain. He got up and paced around the few square feet available to him, like a zoo animal tracing an elliptical path in its cage. "My ex-wife just became the youngest partner in the history of her firm, my supposed best friend and business partner is out in California chasing his dream, and where am I? Trying and absolutely failing to have a normal life. The bar is limping along while I try to deal with this magical mystery paper." As he passed his desk, he thumped the rolled-up _Sun-Times_ on its surface for emphasis.

"Which you love."

"What is it about this that you think I love? The fact everyone I know is moving on in their lives while I'm stuck here dealing with this?"

The corners of Marissa's mouth drew inward. She huffed a little sigh before she said, "This isn't about Marcia and Chuck. Don't hold on to the past so tightly that you lose the future the paper can give you."

"Oh, right, some future! Do you know that woman threatened to sue me for tearing her purse when I got it back from the guy who'd taken it? I thought I was supposed to be settled down with a family and a house and a normal life by now, and instead I get lawsuits for trying to help!"

"She's not going to sue you, Gary. Why would you want normal when you could have magic? Why do you think I want to help you? I can be more than a cheerleader, if you'd let me."

That stilled his feet, but something kept him from saying what she wanted to hear, from acknowledging that the paper was a kind of magic and that maybe he ought to let her in on it more often. "You're more than a cheerleader. You keep the bar going."

She sat up straight, her jaw working for a couple seconds before she said, "I'm no expert in bookkeeping or restaurant management. I'm still learning, and I can't do this alone. Just like you can't do the paper alone. And frankly, I don't want to be here at the bar all day every day."

"Good thing you got school then, huh?" Even as he said it, he winced and looked at the paper instead of at her reaction. "I should get going. There's a scuffle over at the Gleacher Center in about half an hour."

Marissa, of course, didn't let him off the hook. "Have you always used whatever flimsy excuse you can think of to distract yourself from the real issues, or is that just since you started getting tomorrow's news?"

"I'm not!" He shook the paper in her direction. "This guy's injury is real. So is the fire at the Wall Street Deli this afternoon."

"Fine," she sighed, though her tone made it clear that things between them were anything but. "Just keep in mind that whether or not you want my help out there, I _do_ need your help here. McGinty's is going to fall apart if you don't pay more attention to what's happening behind the scenes, do you get that?"

As if a brick building that had been around since right after the Chicago Fire was about to crumble around her ears. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he muttered, stuffing the paper in his back pocket and heading out the door. "Gleacher Center, deli fire, then I'm all yours."

McGinty's would survive just fine, he thought now, provided they cleaned up the problems caused by Chuck's unorthodox accounting practices. Which he could help Marissa with as soon as the paper gave him a break. These days he was lucky if he got more than four hours' sleep. 

His brain or body must have tried to rectify that, because ten minutes later the frantic clacking of laptop keys woke him. A throat cleared behind him, and his head snapped up. He shot an apologetic look over his shoulder. The guy rolled his eyes and made a note on his Palm Pilot with a stylus. Gary tried to stretch surreptitiously while he checked out the people around him. They were the kind of businesspeople Marcia had tried to turn him into back when they were married. As stressful and exhausting as his life had become, he was glad not to be one of them anymore. 

He checked his watch. Whatever was going to happen here, it'd better happen soon. He needed to head for the Loop soon to stop the fire.

One of the business types in the row in front of Gary waved her hand. "What kinds of investment opportunities are presented by the practical applications of quantum computation?"

Dr. Stinton chuckled ruefully. "Many industries and governments are anxious to know the same thing. Basically, the exponentially increased speed of such a machine would make it possible to perform incredibly complex computations in seconds. Applications will include predicting weather and the spread of disease, developing space travel, and more. All by flipping a few atomic particles from one dimension to another and back." He beamed for a split second, then his face fell. "Of course, we have to find a means to stabilize and control the switching without losing particle coherence, and to calculate how to do that immediately would take—well, frankly, it would take a quantum computer. As it stands, we're at least two decades out from making it a reality."

"Wouldn't something like that create holes in the fabric of space-time?" asked one of the students in the front row. "I mean, if we're flipping particles, why not whole atoms or molecules?"

"There's the question the Sci-Fi Channel would love for me to answer." The students laughed, and Stinton adjusted his glasses, squinting at the clock. "Realistically, it would require a massive amount of energy to flip anything larger than atomic particles. We can delve into that more next time, if you're still interested. But I think we'd better call it quits for today." After a bit of scattered applause, the members of the audience started to collect their things.

Gary shook himself out of his stupor. "So where's the fight?" he whispered to Cat. In answer, Cat headed down the nearest set of stairs. Gary followed. He had nearly reached the front of the room when he heard footsteps behind him. The stairs shook as if an earthquake had struck. Turning, Gary started to say, "Watch out," but someone in a suit pushed into him, almost through him, with so much force Gary fell and rolled into the legs of the presentation table as Cat's yowl sounded in his ear. 

"Damn," said an oddly familiar voice, but when Gary lifted his head, there were only curious physics geeks peering down at him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the professor snapped. "You'll damage my prototype!" He rested a hand on a small black box that sat next to a spiffy laptop and a cylinder about the size of an aspirin bottle that was projecting images and formulae onto the white board.

"Sorry," Gary muttered. "Someone ran into me." Hands were offered; he took one and a kid in jeans and a polo shirt hauled him to his feet. He started to apologize to the professor, but a woman in a suit and heels pushed in front of him. 

"Back off, Hobson. This is my deal." Her blonde hair was pulled back into some kind of updo, like Marcia had worn when she'd had long hair. Her suit and briefcase telegraphed money and power. She flashed a frown at him, nose wrinkled, then turned to the professor. "Ignore him, Dr. Stinton. He can't match the offer my investors are willing to make."

"How do you know my name?" Gary asked. Everyone was staring at him. Cat had disappeared. Typical. "Did anyone else get hurt?"

The blonde snorted. "You ought to try out for the gymnastics team, Hobson. You're losing your touch with investments." She looked him up and down and added, "Not to mention your fashion sense."

Why did every woman in his orbit have it in for him today? He took a step back. "I'm, uh—I'm going to go now." 

Gary hurried up the steps and out of the auditorium, wondering what that had been about. Whoever the woman was, and however she knew him, he was sure he'd never seen her before. At least he'd stopped the fight somehow, though he felt as though he'd been in one himself. His shoulder throbbed and he could feel a headache starting up; he must have jolted something when he fell. But as usual, there wasn't time to worry about what it all meant. The deli fire would happen in less than an hour.

* * * * *


	2. Chapter 2

_Bring your hurricanes_  
_The forecast is about to change_  
_Strange, strange weather_  
_~Paul Buckley_

* * *

____

____

"It was right there," Gary insisted, gesturing at the table, empty except for a beat up IBM Think Pad. The whole gaggle of geeks stared at him as if he were a nutcase.

Dr. Stinton chuckled. "I know this is exciting stuff, but I didn't expect one of our visitors to take a header off the stairs trying to ask me about it."

"You okay?" asked the kid who had helped Gary up.

"I'm fine," Gary muttered, though his shoulders ached as if he'd tried to lift too much at the gym. "Dr. Stinton, where's the prototype you were demonstrating?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

When had the professor put on glasses? Gary shook off his sense of dislocation. Maybe he'd bonked his head, but that wasn't important. What mattered was securing an exclusive investment deal. Now that he'd talked Pritchard into it, he couldn't let Chambers, Quilling, or the Department of Defense get first dibs.

"You can't make the deal with her." He gestured to his right, where Stephanie Chambers was supposed to be standing. She was gone. "Where—how—" he stammered, but thought of what Pritchard would say if he didn't come back with at least a handshake deal, and recovered. "The thing is, I represent a much larger group of investors who want to fund your efforts. We can give you what you need to take quantum computing to the next level. We'll put one of those in every university, and then in every home."

Some of the students snickered while Dr. Stinton blinked at him from behind thick glasses. "I haven't seen you in my lectures before."

"I'm not a student," Gary said through clenched teeth. "My investors have very deep pockets and the financial expertise of Strauss and Associates to back them up." He lowered his voice. "I know you wanted us to believe that was a simulation you ran, but it was real, and I know it. If you give me the specs on your machine I can fund your research for the next five years."

Stinton glanced at the Think Pad. "My laptop?"

"The quantum computer." Gary'd heard of absent-minded professors, but this was ridiculous. "The one you must have given to Ms. Chambers or the government goons before you even listened to my proposal."

"No one has that technology. It's all up in my head." Stinton tapped his forehead, then nodded toward his students. "And in theirs. As I explained, the hardware doesn't exist because we haven't been able to determine the parameters for decoherence."

"What was that demonstration all about?" Gary looked to the students for confirmation, but they stared at him blankly. 

Stinton gathered his papers while the students filtered out. "Young man, I think you've misunderstood the theoretical aspect of theoretical physics. Please pay more attention next time. And if there is a next time, please refrain from bringing your pets with you." He nodded toward the floor, where an apricot-striped cat sat, staring hard at Gary.

"That's not mine. I want to talk to you about investing in your _computer_."

Stinton held up a hand. "The quantum computer is a powerful idea. But right now, it's an idea for the future." He snapped his case shut. "The far distant future."

Gary couldn't have cared less about the future. If there was no quantum computer, he was sunk right the hell now. He watched Stinton go. Scanned the empty auditorium. Once when he was a kid, the projectionist in Hickory's one and only movie theater had mixed up the film reels, and some Woody Allen flick had started up right in the middle of _Star Wars_. That was what this felt like.

Case in point: the auditorium seats were red. He was sure they'd been blue. And while Stinton might have put on the glasses after Gary fell, he hadn't had time to get a haircut, make a deal with Stephanie Chambers, and hide the computer.

Gary rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe he really had hit his head. Or maybe all the quantum talk and the money to be made from it had turned it.

The money. "Oh, shit." He pulled his phone out of his pocket. He had to stop Pritchard from making any moves with the investors. "No signal?" he asked as the phone flashed the message at him. "Are you kidding me?" This was not the day he'd planned to have. He sprinted up the stairs, never noticing the cat who followed him out.

* * * * *

Gary couldn't move as quickly as he wanted to. The muscles in his arms, legs, and back ached as if he'd been flattened by a steamroller, and the headache had graduated from faint to pounding. Funny, it hadn't seemed like a bad fall. Promising himself a big dose of ibuprofen as soon as he got home, he headed across the river, then pushed into the Loop through the midafternoon flood of tourists and flex-time workers.

Where exactly was he supposed to go? He'd known it before, but it had completely left his mind. Leaning against a light pole, he pulled the paper from his back pocket and squinted at the Metro page. The story about the fight in the lecture hall was gone, of course. He fixed his attention on the next article he had to deal with. 

DELI FIRE KILLS TWO

"Fire took two lives and destroyed the Wall Street Deli at 110 West Monroe Street yesterday. Investigators believe faulty wiring in a basement circuit box may be to blame. The fire was reported at three-fifteen and spread quickly, resulting in a stampede for the door. The identities of the two victims were withheld pending notification of relatives."

He checked his watch. Three o'clock. Luckily the deli was only a block away. The building itself might be a lost cause, but the people in it, those he could help. He skirted a group of kids headed toward the L station, rounded the corner, and stopped dead in his tracks. He looked down at the article, up at the street signs and in all four directions. Nothing he did changed one simple fact: 

The deli wasn't there.

* * * * *

Gary hailed a cab to take him back to Strauss and Associates. He hurried through the lobby and up the short flight of stairs to the front office, knowing he'd have to explain all this to Pritchard, or he'd lose his job as well as the investment opportunity. He barged through the office doors, not even realizing the security guard had followed him until a huge hand landed on his shoulder. "Not so fast, buddy."

"I work here." Gary shrugged off the hand and turned to the receptionist's desk. A willowy blonde stranger glared sternly at him and stood, hands on hips.

"I've never seen him before," the security guard told the receptionist. "You?" 

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir," she told Gary, "but you have to have a guest pass to enter the offices."

He blinked at her in disbelief. "I'm not a guest. I get that you're a temp, or new, or whatever, but I work here. I have an office down the hall, right next to Pritchard's."

"Who?" the guard asked.

"Phil Pritchard," Gary said, and the receptionist let out an indelicate snort. He glanced at her desk, where a nameplate identified her as Andrea Franklin. "Where's the other one?"

"The other what?"

"The other receptionist, the blind one." The one who always had his mail ready when he walked in the door. "Miss, uh..." Same name as a street. "Miss Clark. Where'd she go?"

"Sir, I don't know what you're talking about or who you are, but I am the receptionist here. I've worked here for nearly a year, and I am not blind. I've also never seen you before in my life." She leaned over the desk to identify the source of the loud meows sounding from near Gary's feet. "You certainly can't bring a cat in here."

"That's not my cat." 

The security guard scooped up the animal and tried to thrust it into Gary's arms. Gary backed away. 

"My name," he said deliberately, "is Gary Hobson. You need to let me in. I have work to do. Work I do every single day. Get Phil Pritchard out here and he'll tell you."

The receptionist didn't even blink. "Mr. Pritchard hasn't worked here in six months."

He rocked back on his heels. "Look, honey, if this is some kind of practical joke—" Wait, that was it. Had to be. "Did Chuck Fishman put you up to this?"

"'Honey'? Really?" She rolled her eyes. "You need to leave with Larry, or I'm calling the cops."

The guard dropped the cat and reached for his arm, but Gary ducked away. He fished a business card out of his suit pocket and handed it to Ms. Franklin. "Gary Hobson, Junior Partner. That's me."

She looked from Gary to the card and back, then dropped the card on the counter as the phone began to ring. "Nice try, but the logo's in the wrong font." She picked up the phone. "Strauss and Associates, how may I help you?"

The guard took Gary's arm and steered him out the door. "You want my advice, you should get some coffee and clear the liquid lunch out of your system. Or maybe you got low blood sugar? My wife gets loopy if she doesn't eat." He pulled a dazed Gary down the steps and to the main building doors. "The deli down the street makes the best pastrami in the city. But of course you know that, what with you working here and everything." 

He would have argued, but something furry and annoying was trying to wrap itself around his ankle. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded, trying to kick the cat away.

The guard crossed his arms and lifted an eyebrow. "You need a ride back to the funny farm?"

He pulled the keys to his BMW out of his pocket. "I have my own way home. Not that I live at the—forget it." Finally shaking his leg free, he stomped out the door and flipped his phone open. Still no service. 

The cat butted its head against his leg with a plaintive mew. "Oh, I'm supposed to feel sorry for you? You got me thrown out of my own office. Scram." He aimed a kick at the cat, but it ducked under his foot and streaked off down the street. "Good riddance."

He started for the garage, then paused, jingling his keys in his hand. The guard had a point about eating. He'd worked through lunch and he still ached from head to toe. If nothing else, he could catch up with Pritchard at the gym later, but he wasn't ready to play squash on an empty stomach. He rounded the corner, and lo and behold, even though he thought he knew every establishment within a mile of Strauss, he found a restaurant he'd never seen before. 

"Welcome to the Wall Street Deli," said a young woman in a red apron when he walked up to the counter. "What can I get for you?" 

"Pastrami on rye, extra mayo, and a grande latte, extra shot, skinny." Gary wrinkled his nose as he tried his cell again, wondering what they were burning in the kitchen. "Do you have a pay phone?"

"There's one outside the drug store around the corner." The girl handed his order over to the prep guy, then asked when Gary frowned, "Is there a problem, sir?"

He sniffed. The acrid tang was stronger now. "Do you smell smoke?"

* * * * *

The intersection was home to two office buildings, a coffee shop, and one store that seemed to sell nothing but purses. There was no Wall Street Deli in sight. Gary checked the article again, but it hadn't changed. Could the _Sun-Times_ have it wrong? It wasn't as if he could get any help from Cat, who'd disappeared after tripping him back in the lecture hall.

If a fire was going to happen, the coffee shop seemed the most likely candidate. It had the same address as the deli. Maybe the name had been a misprint. Gary crossed the street and ducked inside. Bells jangled, a group of women looked up from their conversation, and two older men paused their chess game. The place was tiny. No way to lurk until he smelled smoke. But there should have been smoke already.

"What can I get you?" the young man at the counter asked.

"Actually, I'm looking for the Wall Street Deli," Gary said.

"Never heard of it."

"This is One Ten West Monroe, right?"

The guy rolled his eyes right up into the mop of hair drooped across his forehead. "Sir, if you're not going to order, I need to take care of my paying customers." 

Gary looked behind him. There was no line, nor was there even a whiff of smoke. Marissa might have called in the fire to prove she could help, but she would have told the fire department about the deli. Which didn't seem to exist, at least at this address. "I guess I'll take a coffee." Maybe it would chase away his headache.

"What size?"

"Medium. Do you—"

"You mean a _moyen_. Latte, mocha, caf, or decaf?"

"Plain coffee. Do you smell—"

"Cream, half and half, skim, two percent, or foam?"

Gary slammed a hand on the counter, resisting the urge to rip the stud right out of the kid's snotty pierced nose. "Black. Black coffee. Hey!" He grabbed the eye roller's arm before he could turn away. "Do you smell something burning?"

He shook off Gary's arm and stomped over to the coffee urns. "Unlike _some_ places, we don't over-roast our beans."

Should he evacuate the place anyway? He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes after three. Not a hint of smoke or flames.

"If you'd order precisely, it wouldn't take so long." The kid smacked the cup on the counter, spattering coffee everywhere. "Three dollars and twenty-nine cents."

"For a plain cup of coffee?" He dug a handful of bills and change out of his pocket. "Do you have a basement here?"

The kid looked him up and down, then leaned in and whispered, "It's where we store the bodies."

He wouldn't put it past this guy. "Are you sure you don't smell smoke?" He looked at his watch again. Three twenty-two. "Never mind." He picked up the coffee, then nearly dropped it when he realized how hot the cup was.

"You can't sue," the kid said when Gary made an inarticulate noise. "Says so right on the cup."

"Whatever." He grabbed an insulating sleeve from the self-service counter and went back outside. He definitely had the right intersection. But there were no panicking people, no plumes of smoke or shooting flames, no fire trucks. Setting the coffee on a bright blue _Sun-Times_ newsstand, he opened the paper. The story about the deli fire had moved to the Metro section.

"An electrical fire did minor damage to a delicatessen on West Monroe Street yesterday afternoon. At approximately three fifteen, an alert customer smelled smoke and notified employees. Customers and workers evacuated safely, and fire fighters were able to stop the blaze from spreading out of the basement where it began."

"I ask for normal, and this is what you give me?" He smacked the rolled-up paper against the newsstand, as if that would bang some sense into it. His arm knocked into the coffee cup, sloshing hot liquid all over his hand. Passersby stared when he let out a curse. Shaking coffee off his hand, he looked up and down the street, as if the answer would appear somehow. Cat, of course, was nowhere in sight.

This was a wash. Instead of walking, he decided to take a bus back to McGinty's, seeing as his head was pounding fiercely and his legs were achingly stiff. He tried the coffee while he walked to the stop, half a block away. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't three bucks good, either. Kind of like this day. Not the strangest he'd had, not by a long shot, but it sure as heck wasn't normal. 

When he sat down on the bus, he double checked the paper. No new stories had appeared. Any other day he would have said that was a good thing and gone back to McGinty's with a clear conscience, but today he had Marissa's pointed commentary about how he was running the bar and his life to deal with. Still, being home, no matter how much he griped about it sometimes, was better than running around dealing with a paper that had gone off-kilter. It'd be worth figuring out how to apologize without using the word "sorry," which Marissa claimed to hate, if he could eat something and shake the headache. He might even be able to catch up on some of the bar's financial paperwork.

But when he got to the corner of Illinois and Franklin, McGinty's was gone.

* * * * *

Munching on his sandwich, Gary hoofed it back to the parking garage. The deli's owner had given him a free lunch to thank him for noticing the smoke. After a lot of running around and yelling from the other customers and then the firemen, it had all turned out to be no big deal, just a few sparks in a fuse box. It paled in comparison to the weirdness at Gary's own workplace. 

Maybe the security guard at Strauss had been right and he was having an off day. More likely the whole thing was somebody's idea of a joke. Probably Chuck's, though why Chuck would wait so long to take his revenge, Gary had no idea. Still, hire a couple of actors to mess with Gary's head and watch it all from behind the scenes? It wasn't a bad prank. Any other day he might have actually appreciated its ingenuity, but with his cell phone on the fritz and this whole quantum computer investment plan going wonky, it was a good thing he hadn't caught Chuck at the office. Hell, for all he knew, that bit with the professor had been Chuck's doing, too.

It was after four. No point going back to work. The actors would probably still be there, and he didn't relish the thought of Chuck laughing in his face. He'd go home and call Pritchard from there. Marcia had had an early court appearance scheduled, he remembered as he swallowed the last of the sandwich and tossed the wrapper in a trash can outside the garage. She was probably home already. 

His stiff legs protesting, he hurried up the three flights of stairs to his reserved spot, where the spate of insanity continued. His BMW wasn't in the right space. It wasn't, he determined after a thorough search of the third floor, then of every floor, in any space at all. He ranted at the attendant for a good half hour, especially when the kid claimed never to have seen Gary before. 

"It's a red three twenty-eight. A _convertible_ ," he ground out, dangling the keys in front of the attendant's face. "You'd better not have let someone else run off with it. My car payments are more than your rent." To be honest, his car payments were nearly more than Gary could afford, but he had to have a car the senior partners could respect. He and Marcia had decided it was worth the hit now for the return in prestige, and damn if it wasn't one sweet ride. "Did someone put you up to this?" His voice echoed around the garage. "Was it Chuck Fishman?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, sir. Trust me, if we had a car like that parked here, I would guard it with my life."

"Right down to your last pimple, I'm sure." Gary fished his monthly pass out of his wallet. "See this? This is proof I park here every day."

The kid ran the card through a bar code scanner. Nothing happened. Eyeing Gary warily, he ran it through a couple more times. Still nothing. "Sir, this isn't a valid card. Our passes this month are red, not brown."

Gary stared at him in absolute disbelief. "I'm going to call the cops on you. Not to mention my wife, who's a lawyer."

"Sir, I swear, it's not here. Are you sure you're in the right garage?"

To be honest, he wasn't sure of anything anymore. "What's your name?"

"Bradley."

"You'll be hearing from the cops tomorrow, Bradley."

The kid gulped, which made Gary feel marginally better. "Yes, sir. But I can call the police, too, if you keep harassing me."

"You tell Fishman, wherever he's watching from, that he's going to lose his ass once Marcia gets hold of him."

"Sir?"

He couldn't handle this conversation, let alone this whole ridiculous day. He snatched his pass card back from the attendant, stomped outside, and hailed a cab.

* * * * *


	3. Chapter 3

_Don't it always seem to go_   
_That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone_   
_They paved paradise_   
_And put up a parking lot_   
_~Joni Mitchell_

* * *

Instead of three stories of an old brick fire station, a parking garage rose up higher than the L tracks. The concrete monster dwarfed everything around it. Gary stared, shook his head, and stared some more, but it didn't go away. 

Everything else was familiar. The street signs on the lamp pole were correct: West Illinois and Franklin Streets. Gene and Georgetti's steakhouse was across the street, and the spire rose from Assumption Church down the block. The window displays in the decorator's shop behind him might have been a bit different than he remembered, but they changed all the time, and it wasn't as if he'd ever paid them much notice.

He let out a slow breath, closed his eyes, counted to ten, and looked again. It was still there. Stepping out of the flow of foot traffic, he leaned against the wall of the design shop and paged slowly through the paper. There was no indication something had happened to McGinty's. He couldn't imagine what it would have taken to replace the landmark building in a few hours.

He crossed the street and walked around the block, touching the walls of the garage to make sure they weren't some kind of hologram, but no, they were solid, a pebbly surface that felt nothing like McGinty's terra cotta bricks. He ventured into the garage, but the bar wasn't hidden inside it. It was gone. There was no alley, no dumpsters, no Jeep or van, no Zimmerman's Liquor shop behind it, no foster home around the corner. Just a looming, ugly parking garage courtesy of Kaddison Enterprises Ltd. 

A random deli not being where the paper said it should have been was one thing, but this was impossible. Nausea and his churning thoughts amplified Gary's aches and pains. "What the hell, what the hell, what the hell," he muttered as he backed away from the place where his home had been. It was as if Barney Kaddison had dropped the garage on top of the old fire station, crushing McGinty's beneath it.

Marissa's voice echoed through his confusion, telling him that McGinty's would fall apart if he didn't start paying more attention to it. But that had been hyperbole. Even if she'd wanted to, she couldn't have demolished and replaced it in a matter of hours.

Not knowing what else to do, he started down the street and away from the atrocity he couldn't quite fit inside his mind. A few blocks east, the modern fire station was still there, and Ted Billis sat outside, chugging down his usual vat-sized plastic cup of iced tea. 

"Ted!" Gary had to restrain the impulse to grab a friend. Acquaintance, really, but at least he was there, he was real, and he was familiar. He stopped short of the lawn chair. "Ted, what happened to McGinty's?"

Ted blinked up at him, his broad face crinkling into a bemused frown. "Do I know you?"

Gary took a step back. "I thought you did. I know you."

Nodding, Ted put his tea down on the sidewalk and held out a hand for Gary to shake. "Sorry I don't remember, but that's an occupational hazard. We run into so many people every day."

Gary pulled his hand free, then rubbed the back of his head, glancing back the way he'd come. "I don't know what's going on. McGinty's—you know McGinty's, right? It's gone."

Ted tilted back in his chair, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. "I remember that place. Shame old man McGinty sold it. Used to hang out there all the time. After work, of course. Is that where you know me from?"

Gary felt his jaw clench, a sure sign the stress was getting to him. "McGinty didn't sell the place," he said, forcing the words between his teeth. "I mean, he did, but then Barney Kaddison gave it to me. I just left there a couple hours ago. What happened to it?"

Ted stood up slowly, blinking at Gary as if he wasn't quite sure he was real. "That garage has been there for a year, and from what I hear, Kaddison doesn't give away his dryer lint, let alone prime real estate in River North. Are you sure you're okay?"

Memories of his previous encounters with Ted crowded Gary's brain. "You don't only know me from the bar. Remember when you helped me save the man who tried to jump from the Marina City Garage last month?"

Ted put his hands on his hips. More firemen, some of whom Gary recognized, had gathered just inside the open garage to watch. "Nobody saved him," Ted said. "We pulled his body out of the river. You sure as hell weren't there. You want me to call someone for you?" 

Gary took another step back. These guys who'd been his friends suddenly looked like a gang that didn't welcome new members. "No. No, that's—that's okay. I have to go." Not home, home wasn't there, but he couldn't stay here, either. "I have to go," he repeated, but before he turned away, he asked, "Can you tell me the date?"

Ted's eyebrows shot up to his receding hairline. "June eleventh."

"And the year?"

One of the guys behind Ted snorted. "Nineteen ninety-eight," Ted said.

"That's what I thought." He wanted to ask a few thousand more questions, but the firefighters had solidified into a wall, and nothing he said was going to crack it. "Okay. Thanks."

He turned and walked east. Away from the fire station, away from where McGinty's should have been. It was as if someone had undone his accomplishments of the past couple years: stopping Kaddison's parking garage, preventing Rudy Grant's suicide. What else wasn't real? 

Jamming his hands into his pockets to stop their shaking, he walked a few more blocks to the White Hen convenience store. Once inside, he pulled the remaining change from his pocket and dumped it on the little shelf under the pay phone in the back of the store. He called McGinty's first, but a recording informed him there was no such number. His own number, same recording. He stared at the distorted half-image of his face in the metal plate of the phone, then dialed again.

"Hello?"

"Marissa?" he blurted out, just as he realized the answering voice was rough and male.

"Do I sound like Marissa to you?"

He grabbed the divider surrounding the phone. "Where is she? What happened to her?"

"How the hell should I know?" The connection clonked shut.

After a few deep breaths, Gary asked the clerk for a pen and the phone book. There was no listing for McGinty's, but there was one for Marissa Clark. It wasn't the number he remembered as hers, but he dialed it, hoping against hope. The answering machine had a different message than the one he knew, but it was definitely her voice. It sent a whoosh of air out of his chest in relief.

"Marissa," he said at the tone, "thank God it's you." How could he explain this? "I'm sorry about earlier, but I really need to talk to you. What happened to McGinty's?" He took a deep breath, trying to figure out what he could have said that had been bad enough to cause this. "Look, I know you're frustrated with me. But this is pretty drastic, changing everything…" In ways she couldn't possibly have changed things, not in a matter of hours. "Not that you did it, but I don't understand, and I'm sorry, and I'm coming over. I want to make sure you're all right." And find out where his life had gone. 

He dove back into the phone book to double check Marissa's address, since nothing was where he thought it should be. According to the listing she lived a couple blocks over from the place she'd had back when he'd first met her, not in the row house in the safer neighborhood he'd helped her move to last fall. He scribbled the address above the masthead of the _Sun-Times_ , then took a minute to think. He didn't have enough change to call Chuck in California. Since he already had the phone book open to the Cs, he looked up Crumb. There wasn't anyone with that last name.

On a sick impulse, he looked up his own name. There was no G. Hobson, which was how he'd been listed since his divorce. No Gary Hobson either, but there was a "G. & M. Hobson." He stared at that for a few thumps of his heart. He knew several women whose names started with M, but he'd only been married to one of them. He used his last loose change to call and got another machine. "You've reached the home of Gary and Marcia Hobson," said a voice. _Her_ voice. "If you'd like to leave a message, please wait for the beep. Be sure to let us know when you called and why."

He stood there with his mouth hanging open until a second beep told him the machine had cut off. Why the hell was Marcia haunting him now? He wrote down the address, though he had no intention of going there until he had a much better idea what was going on. When he realized what the street name meant in terms of real estate value, he did a double take. She'd wanted to live in Lincoln Park when they were married, but they hadn't been able to afford it. He remembered her drooling over real estate listings, even dragging him to open houses on Sunday afternoons, but he also remembered going over the finances with her, explaining why they couldn't afford it until they paid off her law school loans. 

Of course, he also remembered McGinty's being down the block, remembered it _existing_ , so how did he know if those memories were real? 

The one thing that hadn't changed was the paper. The date was still June 12, 1998. The political stories he'd skimmed over that morning in favor of the people in the Metro section who needed saving still filled the front page. This was what he did. It was who he was. And there was one person left in his life who understood. He stuffed the paper back into his pocket, repeating Marissa's address to himself. It wasn't right, but at least he knew from the phone message she was there, three bus transfers away.

* * * * *

Gary caught a cab home, a miracle at rush hour. That and the free sandwich were the only things that had gone right all day. At least his house was something Chuck couldn't replace, move, or hide. The cab dropped him off at the front walk, and he hurried up the steps.

His key didn't fit the lock.

He tried all the other keys on his ring, but none of them worked. Fighting a panic-induced wave of heartburn, he ran to the back door and tried them all again. Nothing. He pounded on the door. "Marcia? Marcia, what's going on?"

The door flew open and he nearly toppled forward. A woman in a neat blue dress and brown apron brandished a frying pan at him, cursing in Spanish and finishing with, "Get out of here before I call the police!"

"Who the heck are you? Where's Marcia? Where's my wife?" He tried to push past the woman into the kitchen—the very yellow kitchen that had been muted green that morning—but she brought the frying pan down hard on his arm, splattering grease all over his shirt.

"Yeow!" Gary wrapped his hand around the throbbing spot on his arm, pulling it in against his stomach. "Marcia!"

The woman waved the frying pan in his face. "Get out!"

No matter what Chuck was trying to pull, Marcia wouldn't let this happen, not here, not in their own home. In college she had been known to refuse to go to movies simply because Chuck had suggested them. "What the hell is going on? Let me talk to Marcia."

"No Marcia here. Only Mr. Santini and his kids, and the police if you don't get lost. No pictures, no autographs, no selling his stuff on eBay." She swung the frying pan again. He ducked, but she managed to scrape his knuckles. "Scram!" 

"Ow! I ought to be the one to call the police. You're in my house!" Gary reached for the woman, wanting only to move her out of his way, but she banged his shoulder with the frying pan and he doubled over.

"What's wrong, Louisa?" said a deep male voice. Gary tried to shake the pain out of his shoulder and looked up. And up. The man who'd replaced Frying Pan Brandisher in the doorway wore navy shorts and a red and white muscle tee. He was a full head taller than Gary and twice as wide, but there wasn't an ounce of fat on him.

"This man thinks he lives here," the woman said from somewhere behind the behemoth. "He wants someone named Marcia."

"My wife. She lives here. With me." Gary fumbled for his wallet, but the man started toward him, backing him out the door and off the back stoop.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, buddy, but if you want an autograph, you'll have to come to signing day at Soldier Field like everyone else."

"I don't—this is—"

"My house," the man finished. "If I ever catch you on my property again, I'm going to pancake you like a rookie QB, only you won't be wearing any pads. Got it?"

Gary shut his eyes, hoping to wake up, but when he opened them, the football player was still there. If someone was trying to gaslight him, it was working. "Is Chuck Fishman paying you to do this? Because the last time I checked, there wasn't anyone named Santini playing for the Bears."

The guy folded his massive arms over his equally massive chest. "You'd better check again."

Okay, that was one point he wasn't going to argue. "Did he drug my coffee this morning?"

Santini, if that was his real name, shook his head. "Drugs are bad. Just say no. Now get lost, before I send Louisa and her frying pan after you."

"I already am." Temporarily defeated, Gary jogged back to the street before Louisa could whack him again.

* * * * *

Rain popped up out of nowhere while Gary waited for the bus. The sky clouded over in a matter of minutes, the sun went dark even though it was early evening in June, and streaky clouds brought a downpour in from the suburbs. It was typical Chicago weather, though the next day's paper reported zero inches of precipitation.

He was soaked by the time the bus pulled up. Along with the rest of the impatient passengers, he squeezed aboard and grabbed onto an overhead rail. He needed the handhold, and not only because the floor was slippery. A horrible new thought had occurred to him: if the paper was wrong about the deli fire and the rain, what else had he missed? What if there was some accident, some crime or disaster he wasn't going to be able to stop because he didn't know about it? 

Marissa would know what to do, he told himself as he pushed his way off the first bus and back into the downpour. Even if she was still annoyed with him, she wouldn't be able to resist an opportunity to fix someone else's problem.

The tiny shelter at the transfer stop was crowded, and he was forced to stand outside the overhang, hunched over so rain streamed down his back. The woman closest to him darted a look his way and clutched her purse tighter. 

The first couple buses that came by were full. Another forty-five minutes went by before he could squeeze his way onto one. It was nearly seven when the bus coughed him out onto a puddled sidewalk in a run-down neighborhood a few miles west of the Loop. The rain had softened into a drizzle, but thunder still rumbled above as the last of the storm meandered toward the lake. 

After a block of sloshy walking, Gary found the apartment building. It wasn't much different than the one Marissa had lived in when they'd first become friends. Shabby, square, squat, and brick. Nothing much to look at on the outside. He just hoped she was home, since she obviously wasn't at McGinty's.

The entrance was locked. A bank of buzzers seemed to be the only way in. Gary scanned faded labels until he found number six. He buzzed, waited, then buzzed again. Marissa's voice, harsh and tinny through the speaker, set Gary back on his heels when it finally came. "Who's there?"

"It's Gary," he croaked. "Marissa, what the hell is going on? I need to see you."

"I don't know any Gary." The connection closed with a hollow _thunk_.

"No, no, come on." He hit the buzzer again, yelling into the speaker over the roar of a motorcycle in the tiny parking lot next to the building. "Marissa, it's me, it's Gary." The motorcycle cut off, and his voice bounced off the bricks. "I know I've been a pain in the ass lately, and I'm sorry, I swear it. You're the only friend I have left."

_Thunk_. "Go away or I'll call the police." _Thunk_.

"Marissa, please!" He punched the bank of buzzers. 

A hand landed on his shoulder and whirled him around. He blinked through dizziness and found himself face to face with a leather-clad biker who held him against the wall as casually as he dangled his helmet from his other hand. "You don't live here."

"No." Gary took a second to swallow back the anger and frustration that would only lead to trouble, as if he weren't already in deep enough. "I need to see my friend, but she won't let me in."

"Who?"

"Marissa Clark. She's in number six, and I know she's home. Could you let me in the building?"

The pressure on Gary's shoulder tightened; the man's dark eyes narrowed. "If she's not letting you in, it's because she doesn't want you in. And if Miss Clark doesn't want you in, you are not—" He poked Gary's chest with one finger. "—getting—" _Poke_. "—in." _Poke_.

"I only want to talk to her!"

"Talk. Right." The biker pushed him into the wall with his whole hand. Bricks bit into Gary's back. "I'm going to do you a favor." He grabbed Gary's arm and propelled him back to the sidewalk. "I'm going to watch you walk away. If you don't turn around, I won't call the cops."

In a surge of desperation, Gary lunged for the building door, but the biker shoved him back to the sidewalk.

"Not happening, buddy." He loomed over Gary with a weirdly familiar expression. "I'm telling you this for your own good. You need to leave now. When you're gone, I'm going inside, and I'm going to check on Miss Clark and make sure she's okay. I'm going to tell her if you try this shit again, if you come back or call her or send her a damn post card, all she has to do is yell for me. You got it?"

"That's what I'm trying to do, make sure she's okay." Gary blinked up at the man through the drizzling rain and realized what had struck a chord. The guy was protecting Marissa. From him. "I would never hurt her! I need her help."

He snorted. "I'll pass that along. But tonight, you're gone. You're a ghost. You were never even here. Got it?" He stood with his arms crossed, his helmet swinging back and forth from his fist. 

Gary's sanity was unspooling fast. He grabbed one last thread. No matter what had happened, Marissa could not have changed so much that she wouldn't help someone who needed her. He held up his hands, palms forward.

"Okay, I'll go. But could you tell her Gary was here asking for her help?"

"What kind of help?"

"What kind of help?" Gary's echo was more of a squeak. 

The biker titled his head to one side. "You know, maybe I should call the guys in the white coats instead of the cops."

"No. No, it's—look, I've lost my cat, and—and everything that goes along with it. Can you tell her that?"

He snorted. "Yeah, I'll pass it along. It'll be real helpful when she's filing a police report." He nodded in the direction from which Gary had come. A bus was approaching the stop. "Better get that. Not too many cabs in this part of town."

After a last, hopeless look at the intercom box, Gary turned and sprinted for the bus. He made it just in time, flashing his dripping monthly pass at the driver and collapsing into a seat. The bus back into downtown wasn't nearly as full as the one he'd taken here.

He rested his aching head against the window. Rain dripped from his hair onto the glass. What the hell was going on? His home had disappeared. Marissa didn't know him. Cat was gone. According to the phone book, he was still married to Marcia. If he didn't know better, he'd think Chuck was putting him through some elaborate _Candid Camera_ hoax, maybe for a new television show. But Chuck wouldn't have been able to resist jumping out from behind the camera and yelling, "Boo!" And Marissa, he thought as his bus passed her apartment building, where the biker still stood guard, wouldn't go along with it in a million years.

He had to keep moving if he was going to find the answers and not drown in this. But who could he turn to for help? He looked down at the smudged names and phone numbers he'd scrawled on the paper.

Maybe going to the cops wasn't such a bad idea after all.

* * * * *


	4. Chapter 4

_But there's a light on in Chicago_  
 _And I know I should be home_  
_~Pete Wentz_

* * *

"Construction on the new post office is expected to begin this fall. Speaking of construction, the Dan Ryan is backed up again due to lane closures. What with everyone coming in for the Sox game, rush hour's going to last a lot longer than usual. Keep your cool and you'll get where you're going eventually. And now here's Casey with sports."

Marissa turned off the radio. The news report hadn't mentioned a fire. Gary must have stopped the one he'd told her about, but she was sure that had been, or had been supposed to be, hours ago. She leaned back in her chair, filling the too-quiet office with its creaks as she rocked and did little half-spins. 

She'd pushed him too hard. She'd reached an end-of-semester breaking point with the dual workloads of school and the bar, where she'd become a de facto manager since Chuck had left. There were days she felt as though she was hanging on by her fingernails. She hadn't been trained to do this, and most of the time she slid by on an improvisational veneer, trying to cover all the jobs Gary couldn't or didn't make time to do.

Today, he'd been home on a rare mid-day break between stories he had to fix, and was eating lunch at his desk when she'd brought up the subject of hiring a manager. They'd needed one since Chuck had left, and now they needed a new bartender as well. Crumb was planning a fishing trip to Idaho starting tomorrow, with a return date of, "Whenever the river runs out of trout." When Gary'd mumbled something about working on their staffing and finances next week, she'd snapped.

She'd tapped a finger on the ledger they were supposed to keep together, side-by-side pages of printed and Braille accounts for the bar. "I refuse to hire anyone until I know we can afford it. At the very least, I need you to interpret how Chuck handled the quarterly taxes. I can't make heads or tails of this stuff."

Somehow they'd slid into a discussion about what had become a perpetual source of stress between them: Gary wanted her to clean up their books, even though he was far more qualified to do it than she was, while she wanted to get out from behind the bar and this desk once in a while and help with the paper. She could not for the life of her understand why he kept pushing her away when she offered to do that, insisting instead that she do the jobs he should have taken care of at the bar. 

"Do you really think I stick around here because I like cleaning up Chuck's mess?" she asked. "Or that Crumb is still here because he likes mixing drinks?"

"He does!" He dropped whatever utensil he was using on his desk and got up to pace, sending the odor of stale beer wafting through the office. Which meant he hadn't done laundry. Again. 

"That's not the only reason he's here. It's not why any of us are here."

They'd had the same conversation so many times she could have predicted most of it even without the next day's newspaper, except for one thing. When she told him, again, that she worried about him, that she wanted to help him, he muttered, "Yeah, and then you wind up half-dead in a hospital room." The accusation dropped between them like a boulder. 

And it was an accusation, though she wasn't sure of what. "Is that what this is about?"

"What what is about?"

There were a lot of parallels trying to line up in her head, but she couldn't put it all together in the frustrated, buzzy atmosphere feeding frustrations on both sides. "I'm not sure I know anymore." There was a moment of silence, weighted with the truth their argument was masking. Marissa knew better than to expect he would immediately take back what he'd said, nor would he expect her to brush it off. They were both too stubborn for that. "Gary, I didn't get sick on purpose, you know that. I may have made a bad choice with Ali, but that choice was mine." 

"Yeah." The unspoken "but" hung in the air, like too much ozone before a thunderstorm, while he cleared his throat, then tried to distract her by mentioning his ex-wife's promotion and listing his errands for the afternoon.

Her "Be careful," as he hurried out the door had been perfunctory; her brain had been too busy processing what he'd said, what they'd both said, and wondering why they weren't able to resolve the tension between them these days. Now she wished she'd at least tried to sound as if she'd meant it. They'd both said a few things the other hadn't wanted to hear. But they'd been doing that for weeks. Why would it set him off like this now? Whatever it was didn't give him the right to run and hide in the paper. 

Truth be told, she didn't think he would. Usually when they fought, he was back in an hour or so with an apology of some form. A joke and a shoulder squeeze, a mocha from the place down the street, a ride home. Donuts. This afternoon she would have settled for his signature on a few forms. Now, as her annoyance melted into concern, she'd be happy to have him there grumping at the desk across from hers. Not that she wouldn't grump right back, but at least she'd know where he was, and that he was okay.

The door to the bar opened. She caught her breath, but it was Crumb who called her name. "I'm here," she replied. "I was listening to WGN."

"The radio's off," Crumb pointed out.

"They got to the sports. Not really my thing this time of year."

Crumb's heavy tread, with a touch of a limp, moved from the divider to the aisle alongside her desk. "That's right, it's Hobson who's the baseball fan, isn't it?"

As if he'd flipped a switch, Marissa's foot started tapping a mile a minute. Spike's tags jingled as he slid down off the couch and came over to let Crumb pet him. "I came in to tell you it looks like the crowd is going to be fairly light tonight, and I'm going to take off early if that's okay. Got a date."

"Sure." She flipped open her watch dial and touched the face. It was after seven. _A few minutes after the last time you asked me_ , she and Chuck used to tell each other while they waited for Gary. "Enjoy your vacation." 

Instead of leaving, Crumb leaned against her desk; the wood groaned. Old Spice, beer, and a mix of rum and citrus wafted closer. Daiquiri night. "What've you been working on all this time?"

"Checking through tax statements, trying to figure out what in the world Chuck was doing to McGinty's finances before he left for California. But I need Gary to walk me through the quarterly payroll report and he's avoiding doing anything I ask him to do these days so—" She broke off with a shrug. "Anyway, I should get out there and make sure everything's okay."

As she stood, Crumb let out soft whoosh of breath and dropped a hand on her arm. "When was he supposed to be back?"

"Three or four hours ago."

"You know that's nothing. How many times has he been late?"

"Plenty." More than usual, lately. Spike butted his head against her leg, and she scratched his ears.

"I know you've heard this before, but he is a grown man."

A grown man who took on other people's troubles to avoid his own. "I understand that he may have found his own thing to do somewhere other than here, yes."

"Thing is…" Crumb's feet shuffled on the floorboards. "Every time I say that, turns out he's in trouble."

"Exactly." Spike pushed into her hand, and Marissa realized Cat hadn't been around all afternoon. "It's not like Gary to disappear, especially when he said he was going to come back and help me. Even if he didn't want to," she added.

After a brief pause, in which he was no doubt trying to decide how much he wanted to know, he asked, "You two have a fight?"

"I may have expressed a few frustrations." 

"He puts a lot on you now that Fishsticks is off in La-la Land, huh?"

"He does," Marissa acknowledged. "Sometimes I wish he'd put more of the right things on me. But I could have expressed myself more gracefully."

"That don't mean he can take off sulking somewhere, not when he knows you worry. Where was he headed when he left?"

Marissa hesitated, but Crumb had been working at McGinty's for a few months now. There was very little he didn't notice. "Was there a fire at the Wall Street Deli today?" she asked. "The one down in the Loop?"

"Uh, yeah, I think I heard something about that when we had Channel Two on earlier. Just a little electrical thing in the basement. No one was hurt."

"No one at all? You're sure?"

"That's what they said, and if you can't WBBM, who can you trust?" After a moment's pause, Crumb added, "He was there, wasn't he?"

"He was supposed to be."

"How would he know—never mind." Crumb shuffled things around on Gary's desk. "Is it too much to ask for a blank piece of paper?"

"In the regular printer."

"Where else was he supposed to go?"

"Crumb?"

"Last known whereabouts. Supposed whereabouts." He was doing his best to sound gruff and cranky, but there was a twist of energy in his voice.

"A lecture at the Gleacher Center, and then the deli." Marissa rubbed her arms, trying to erase the crawling feeling under her skin. 

"You got a picture of him? Oh, sorry, stupid question."

Not stupid, Marissa thought. What bothered her was that Crumb needed to show Gary's picture around town again. "I think there are some on the bulletin board," she said, pointing over her shoulder to the wall next to the kitchen door. 

Crumb walked that way. "Bingo. I mean, it's got Fishman, too, but it'll work."

"He's not all that late." She knew Crumb meant to help, but his swift turn into crisis mode scared her. "Like I said, he might be avoiding the bar. Avoiding me."

"Oh, come on, Marissa. This is Hobson we're talking about. He can be kinda flakey, but he cares about this place, and he cares about you. If he's got a problem here, he'll step up and deal with it."

She wasn't so sure. "It's probably nothing."

"But you got a feeling."

She shrugged. It sounded silly spoken out loud like that.

"I don't trust Hobson's hunches to lead to anything but trouble," Crumb said. "But your feelings, those I trust, especially after that run-in with the Rosarios. You've been holed up in here for most of the dinner rush, and you've been jumpy since this afternoon."

What had been mild concern a few minutes ago blossomed into full-fledged worry. "He should have called. I've told him over and over to buy a cell phone. If he was hurt in the fire, the hospital would have called me by now. Wouldn't they?"

"I'm sure he's fine." Crumb gave her shoulder an awkward half-pat. "I'll check in at the deli, see if anyone spotted him."

"What about your date?"

"She can wait, and if not, I'll get another. I got 'em stacked up like 747s over O'Hare. So to speak. He's fine," he said again. "Probably got lost somewhere."

"Sure," she said, but Gary didn't get lost, not in Chicago. "Should I start by calling hospitals or the police?"

"I'll take care of it," Crumb assured her. He opened the door out to the bar, letting in the soft hum of chatter and clinking glass. But he didn't leave.

"What?" Marissa finally asked.

"You won't get any work done until he gets back, right?"

Of course she wouldn't, not now. But the only way to keep panic at bay was to hide it, especially from herself. "I told you, I need Gary's help to get the taxes done."

"Yeah, so it's stupid for you to sit around waiting. Come on, you're with me." 

It was so out of the blue that Marissa wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly. While she wanted to go, after too many nights sitting around stewing and waiting, she wasn't sure she liked what the invitation meant. If Crumb was this seriously worried about Gary, there was a very real chance something was wrong. "He'd tell me to stay and run the bar," she said, gesturing vaguely at the door.

"He'd be wrong. Like I told you, it's a slow night. A.J. and Sarah can run things for a little while."

"What if Gary calls or comes back?" She took Spike's harness when Crumb handed it to her and slipped it over the dog's head.

"Unlike some Neanderthals, I got a cell phone. A.J. has the number." Crumb followed Marissa and Spike out to the bar. "If he does come back, he can wait for you for a change."

* * * * *

Gary couldn't get cell service anywhere, and when he finally found a pay phone in a drug store, he couldn't reach Marcia at home, at work, or on her own cell. The numbers were either disconnected or nonexistent. He spent a few minutes with his hand on the receiver after the last call, looking out at the endless lines of taxis bustling along Lincoln Avenue and trying to fight back a rising tide of panic. Whatever else had happened, Marcia was real. If this was someone's idea of a joke, she would never take part in it.

It had to be a joke, he decided, ignoring the dozens of questions about how it could have been orchestrated. Dealing with those would make the panic worse. The only way to fight it off was to get angry. 

Angrier. 

He jostled his way through the crowd at the checkout line, pulling off his coat and tie before he stepped out into the humid evening. Forget trying to find Pritchard at the club; there was one person he needed to talk to right now, the one person who might possibly hate him enough to do something like this.

Outside Chuck's apartment, a blue newsstand sold the _Sun-Times_. Gary stopped to read the headlines and check the date to make sure he hadn't somehow turned into Rip Van Winkle. But no, it was still June eleventh, still 1998.

An older man who smelled of cheap whiskey tottered over to Gary, raising his eyebrows hopefully.  
"Hey, buddy, if you're going to buy that, can I pull one out too?" 

"Like I'd ever pay for that rag." Gary turned away, leaving the man staring forlornly at the headlines. Chuck's building looked the same as it had a year ago, all glass and steel and well-tended ferns in the lobby. "I'm here to see Chuck Fishman," he told the bellman, who'd pressed the call button for the elevator.

He gave Gary an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, sir; Mr. Fishman doesn't live here any longer." He blinked, no doubt at the bacon drippings on Gary's second best shirt. "But of course you know that, Mr. Hobson. You helped him pack, I remember. How is Mr. Fishman enjoying California?"

The wash of relief at someone actually knowing him, albeit someone Gary'd never seen in his life, was followed immediately by what would have been a scoff if Gary hadn't choked on it. "Cali-what?"

"Did he leave something here by mistake? Happens all the time, though I don't remember anything of Mr. Fishman's being put into storage. Perhaps we should check there first."

Struggling for control, Gary pointed at the elevators. "Take me to his place."

"But Mr. Hobson, that apartment's been rented out."

Of course it had. For all Gary knew, Chuck could have moved months ago, but not to California. No way would Chuck have been able to resist rubbing something like that in Gary's face. The fact that the doorman was telling this ridiculous story meant he had to be in on the prank. Gary made a show of reaching for his wallet and pulling out a few bills. "I've had a very bad day," he said, offering the money to the old man. "Will you please take me up to Mr. Fishman's place?"

He shrugged and took the money. "I'd be delighted. I'll have to accompany you, of course. Security reasons."

"Of course." At this point, Gary didn't give a rat's ass who found out about Chuck's treachery.

The current supposed resident of Chuck's apartment was female, African American, well past seventy, and not at all happy to see Gary at her door. At least she didn't have a frying pan. She got plenty upset when Gary tried to push past her and get a good look at the apartment. The lavender décor he glimpsed before the bellman pulled him away was definitely not Chuck's style. 

The woman gave them lip all the way back to the elevator. Down in the lobby, Gary told the bellman, "Whatever Chuck's paying you, it's not enough."

"Considering he's not paying me anything? No sir, it's not."

Gary wandered a few blocks to Lincoln Park. His feet ached. He hadn't walked this much in a long time, and he certainly wasn't wearing the shoes for it. He kept expecting Chuck to jump out from behind a tree and shout, "Gotcha!" but it didn't happen. He gulped against a new surge of heartburn, against the insidious thought that all this was far too big for Chuck to pull off. So what the hell was going on?

The park was full of runners, hippies, and squirrels. With the sun setting, they'd clear out before long, and Gary should, too, but he needed to think. He found a bench by the lake on North Shore Beach and dropped onto it. The sun cast long shadows out ahead of him, including his own. He leaned into it, resting his pounding head in his hands. There had to be a way to figure this out. There had to be some pattern, some clue that would tell him what was going on. But he'd never been a genius, and the best he could do was list everything he didn't have. No Marcia. No home. No job. No Chuck to blame it all on, at least not yet. No cell service, no car. 

No Marcia. Out of all of it, that hurt the worst.

Maybe it would be better to think about what he did have. The clothes on his back, his wallet and keys. That was it. At this point, he wasn't sure he even had his sanity. But he had money, and money could buy him a place for the night. He hiked back up to North Boulevard and hailed a cab.

* * * * *


	5. Chapter 5

_It's as though you had lost an arm or a leg but still instinctively reach out to feel your missing limb or try to walk again., placing your entire weight on something that no longer is there._  
_~Zeina Kassen_

* * *

Gary didn't expect to find Crumb at the precinct. He should have been at McGinty's or his own place. But there was no McGinty's, and no Crumb in the phone book. The sensible thing, the thing Crumb would have told him to do, was to go back to the beginning and look for him there. It was the first and so far only sensible thought that occurred to Gary. Thinking much past that wasn't good. It led to panic and the need to have a stiff drink and lie down, but he had no bar to drink in and no bed lie down on, so he most emphatically was not going to think too much.

His shoulders unknotted a little when he walked in and saw the precinct's familiar layout, with its windowed offices on the perimeter of a central bullpen. He grinned ruefully at the officer at the reception desk, a man he'd seen dozens of times. There was no spark of recognition when the guy looked up with a beleaguered, "What?"

"I'm trying to get in touch with a detective who used to work here," Gary said. "He's retired now, but I wondered if you could tell me where to find him."

The cop's eyes narrowed. "What are you, a reporter? We don't give out personal information." He turned back to his computer. 

Gary leaned over the reception desk and lowered his voice. "Look, Detective Crumb's a friend of mine. We lost touch and I thought you could help me. I'm not a reporter," he added quickly. Crumb never had much use for them.

At Crumb's name, something flickered in the desk sergeant's eyes, sympathy, or—Gary wasn't sure. Then it hardened. "You from around here?"

"Yup." Even if no one else thought so.

The sergeant frowned, so hard and deep Gary could have planted seeds in his forehead. "You live in Chicago?"

"Yes," Gary said a little more emphatically. Maybe too emphatically, but damn it, he belonged here.

The sergeant started to say something, then clamped his jaw shut and pointed with his pen to the office that had been Crumb's. "You need to talk to Tagliotti."

Gary took two steps that way before he remembered. Talk about going back to the beginning. Detective Tagliotti was the first cop he'd gone to when the paper started coming. He looked back at the desk, but the sergeant was already on the phone, speaking too low to be heard over the early evening bustle of the bullpen.

"Just keep moving," Gary muttered under his breath.

The office looked almost exactly like it had before Crumb retired: wall map full of push-pins, metal filing cabinets, desk covered in file folders. Tagliotti was the same as he remembered, too: blonde, formidable, her mouth screwed to one side in weary resignation. As she hung up the phone, she waved him in. "Sergeant Shaunessey says you're looking for Detective Crumb."

"Yes. You're a detective?" She nodded. "But I thought—" He swallowed back the story of her demotion after he'd stopped Frank Price from shooting up a bank. "That's great."

She tilted her head to one side and blinked owlishly. "Do I know you?"

For the first time, Gary wasn't sure he wanted someone to remember him. "I don't think so. Gary Hobson." He extended his hand, but she ignored it. 

"May I see some identification?"

"Sure." He fished his license out of his wallet. 

She gave it a cursory look and handed it back, nodding at the chair. "Okay, Gary Hobson, what do you want with Detective Crumb?"

"To find him." Gary sank down on the hard wooden seat. "Like I told the guy out there, he's a friend of mine."

"Really." Tagliotti steepled her fingers, studying him as though he were a case report. One she didn't want on her desk. "When did you last speak with him?"

Gary wanted to say it had only been the day before, but desperate as he was, he had to be careful. The last time he'd seen Tagliotti, she'd threatened to lock him up. "I guess it's been a while."

Tagliotti, on the other hand, sharpened. She pointed at his chair, and he realized the rolled-up paper he'd crammed into the back pocket of his jeans was sticking out to the side. "You follow the news?"

"Yeah."

"You've always lived in Chicago?"

"Since I came here for college. What does this have to do with Crumb?" 

Tagliotti's eyebrows knit into a hard line. She sat up, ramrod straight. "Mr. Hobson, are you playing some kind of joke on this department? Because if you are, you are in for a world of trouble." She stood, glowering down at Gary. "This is not at all funny." She jabbed a finger toward herself. "And this is not my amused face."

"Believe me, I'm not laughing either." Craning his neck to look up at her, Gary spread his hands wide. "There is a Detective Crumb here, right? Or there was, before he retired?"

Tagliotti went very, very still. He wasn't even sure her lips moved when she asked, "Retired?"

"Last winter, yeah. Look, if you can't help me—" He stopped there, because he had no idea what he'd do if she couldn't point him to Crumb.

She blinked once, then stalked out of the office without a word. After a split second, he followed. Tagliotti crossed the bullpen, stopped in front of a glass case mounted to the wall, and whirled on him with barely controlled fury. He was acutely aware that every cop in the room had stopped work to watch.

"Detective Crumb was the finest officer this precinct's ever had." Tagliotti's words were low, precise, and loaded with a hostility Gary didn't understand. "He taught me everything I know about police work, and he gave his life trying to save the people of this city. So whatever it is you're trying to pull, Mr. Hobson, you'd better stop." Her hands balled into fists, and from between clenched teeth she added, "Walk out of here while you still can."

She left Gary standing before the case in open-mouthed shock. The clack of her heels across the linoleum echoed around the silent bullpen. Gary tried to take in what she'd said and what was in front of him, but none of it made sense. The roster of fallen officers, including Mike Killibrew's partner, that was familiar. But next to it was a photo of Detective Marion Zeke Crumb in full dress uniform, and below the frame a small plate listed his name, his years of service, his badge number, and a date: _December 24, 1996. End of Watch._

"Detective Tagliotti?" 

She stopped and turned to face him. All around the bullpen, heads swiveled from her to Gary. 

"This isn't—this can't be."

She closed her eyes and gave her head a shake. "My office, Hobson."

He took one more look at the photo. It was Crumb, but it couldn't be. He hurried back across the bullpen, conscious of every eye upon him. A wave of whispers crested as soon as he crossed the threshold into Tagliotti's office. She stood behind her desk, arms folded.

Gary ran a shaking hand over his mouth, then demanded, "How?" 

"Don't even _try_ to tell me you didn't know."

"I didn't!" How could he know about something that hadn't happened?

This time, the twist of her mouth was pure disgust. "Guy who carries a newspaper in his back pocket, a so-called friend of Crumb's, and you managed to miss the biggest story of Christmas a couple years ago?" She yanked open a desk drawer, took out a newspaper, and slapped it on the desk. "You missed this?"

The yellowing front page of the _Sun-Times_ was dominated by Crumb's photo and a headline in huge black letters above the fold: HERO COP DIES IN BOMB BLAST. 

"How could you miss any of the headlines that week? That whole month?" Tagliotti's voice rose, and she pushed her bangs out of her eyes. "You didn't know about the guy who started out as a nuisance, then turned out to be a homicidal publicity nut who tried to take out a skating rink full of kids on Christmas Eve? Crumb saved every last one of them, even the kid who—" She swallowed back something, maybe rage. "The bomb was in a goddamned teddy bear. How the hell did you miss that?" She stopped, her face white, her shoulders up near her ears.

Gary backed away from her and her paper, the wrong paper, and hit the chair. He dropped into it. 

He had stopped the bombing. Crumb hadn't died.

When he could breathe again, he looked up to find Tagliotti had sat too, and some of the fierceness had gone from the set of her jaw. "You really didn't know?"

"Of course n—" He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. "No, I didn't."

There was still doubt in her eyes, but her posture eased. "If that's true, and I'm still not sure how it could be, then I'm sorry you found out like this."

"Yeah," Gary managed, and added a totally inane, "Me too." He hadn't eaten since lunch, but his stomach heaved. "Didn't anyone try to stop it?"

She let out an incredulous little laugh. "What is it you think we do here, Mr. Hobson?"

"No, no, I mean, was there a civilian who tried to warn Crumb?" Someone who looked exactly like me, he wanted to add, but if she'd recognized him, she would have clapped him in jail by now. "Someone who acted a little strange?"

"We get crackpots all the time." Tagliotti looked Gary up and down with a lifted eyebrow. "Living in this city would make anyone crazy. Some people cope with it by imagining they're psychic."

"So there was someone?"

She sighed and looked out across the bullpen. Gary wasn't sure, but her gaze seemed to be aimed at the tribute to Crumb. "Doesn't matter. It didn't stop what happened." Tagliotti looked down at her hands. "In the end, it didn't amount to anything." There was something more than grief there, something she wasn't saying, but Gary wasn't sure he wanted to know what it meant. 

If the paper was real, then Crumb wasn't dead. If the paper wasn't real, that meant Gary'd been hallucinating the past two years, or worse. Right now, he was reeling so badly from losing everything he'd known that he wasn't sure his sanity could survive "or worse." 

"Anything else?" Tagliotti asked.

"I guess not." He wasn't sure how he got to his feet, let alone found the door, but he was there when Tagliotti called his name one more time. When he turned back, she was watching him with real concern, her head tilted to one side.

"Do you need help?"

That was what police did. That's why he'd gone to them in the first place—Tagliotti in the very first place with the bank robbery, and Crumb nearly every time after that. Those memories were too real to be wrong. Crumb couldn't be dead. "I don't think you can help me." 

Another tense silence fell over the bullpen when he started through it, but there must have been some signal from Tagliotti, because the subdued hum of cops, victims, and suspects had resumed by the time he walked out the door.

Into what, he had no idea.

* * * * *

"I'm telling you, you can't bring a dog in here." The manager's scratchy voice came out of a roiling haze of meat, cheese, and coffee smells, aimed squarely at Marissa. Spike let out a low growl and pressed closer to her side.

"The ADA says I can," Marissa countered. "You're compliant, aren't you?"

"Look, lady, I'm sorry you're blind and all, but I just cleaned this floor. The last thing I need is some beast drooling all over it."

"Spike doesn't drool."

The voice turned away from her, toward Crumb. "My place almost went up in smoke today, okay? You gotta cut me some slack."

"That's what we want to talk to you about," Crumb said. "You know the guy in this picture? Not the goofy looking little one. The big guy in the baseball cap."

"Of course I know him." Maybe the pinched quality in his voice was due to the stress of almost losing his business that afternoon, or maybe he always sounded like he'd been sucking helium. "He smelled the smoke before anyone else. If he hadn't been here, I don't know what would have happened."

"He give you a name?" Crumb asked.

"Said it was Gary something. Dodgson, maybe."

"Hobson," Marissa said.

"Yeah, that's it."

She curled both hands around Spike's harness so tightly they hurt. He'd been in the deli. Maybe something else had come up in the paper. So why hadn't he called? "What happened to him?"

"How's she mean?" the manager asked. Crumb gave a little cough. 

" _I_ mean," Marissa said, "Where did he go after the fire?"

"Said he was headed home." It didn't sound as if the man was directing his answer to her, and Marissa bit back an impatient sigh. "I tried to thank him. Gave him a free pastrami on rye and everything, but he didn't stick around." 

"Was there anything weird about the way he acted?" Crumb asked.

"Not really. Kept dialing his cell with one hand and dangling his keys in the other, like I was supposed to be impressed that he drives a Beemer. I don't care if he rides a Big Wheel. He saves my shop, he eats here free for life."

"But not rye," Marissa said.

"What's that?" Crumb asked. 

"Gary doesn't like rye bread."

"I'm telling you, mister, that's what he asked for. Pastrami on rye, extra mayo."

"He doesn't have a cell phone," Marissa went on, "and he didn't drive anything this afternoon, let alone a BMW. Did you notice a cat?"

"I told you, no pets. Except for blind dogs, I guess."

"Spike's not—"

"Does she always ask such weird questions?"

Crumb ignored that. "You sure this is the guy?" Marissa heard the slick swish of a finger on a photograph again.

"Yeah, yeah. I mean, he didn't have the hat, but it was him. He was wearing a nice suit, looked like it was tailored. Gucci or Armani or something."

"That can't be Gary," Marissa insisted. The only thing that did sound like him was saving the deli.

"This guy says it is," Crumb said. "And you're the one who said he was headed over here."

"He wasn't wearing a suit."

"How would she know?" the manager asked.

"Because I'm not an idiot!" Marissa reached out and found Crumb's sleeve. "He's wrong. I know you didn't see him leave, but if you ask anyone at the bar, they'll tell you Gary was wearing jeans, sneakers, and the same shirt he wore two days ago when he spilled half a pitcher of beer on himself." 

"That does sound a lot more like Hobson than Gucci. But if this guy's right, and he was here—"

"When did he put on a suit and pick up a car and a cell phone?" she finished. 

"That," the manager said, still to Crumb, "I cannot tell you."

"You haven't told us anything that can help us find him," Marissa said. "The man saved your business!"

"Which I'd like to get back to running, if you people don't mind."

"If you're sure that's all you remember, we'll get out of your…shop." Crumb's tiny pause before the last word was infused with disgust. He brushed against her arm as he turned to go.

"Wait." Clenching her jaw, Marissa fished one of McGinty's business cards out of her purse and held it out to the man. "Please call us if he comes back."

He took the card and let out a half-laugh. "McGinty's Bar and Grill? What, you're afraid I'll steal your best customer?"

"He owns the place." Marissa hated the quaver in her voice.

"That guy was doing better than some dive sports bar." Before Marissa could choke out a retort, he asked Crumb, "You two done? Gonna order anything?"

"Don't think so." Crumb growled, and hustled Marissa outside.

"I shouldn't have snapped at him," she said after a couple of deep breaths of fresh air. She turned Spike back toward the deli. "Maybe I should apologize."

"Oh no you shouldn't. He deserved a lot worse than you gave him."

"But he might be able to tell us more about Gary."

"Nah. He was as confused by what we were telling him as vice-a-verse-a. At least we know Hobson left here in one piece." Crumb sounded as perplexed as Marissa felt. "If he's really upset with you, or avoiding you, who would he go to?"

Gary didn't have a lot of other friends now that Chuck was in California, nor did he have family in Chicago. He'd mentioned Marcia's promotion being in the paper, but that had been more about envying her life than wanting Marcia back. That ship had sailed a long time ago. "He doesn't have anyone else to turn to," she said around the lump in her throat. "And I let him down." 

She should have remembered Gary's lurking fear of ending up alone. He liked to blame it on the paper, but it had started with Marcia if not sooner. He didn't trust anything to last, not his relationships and not the bar, and she'd thrown that fear in his face when she'd accused him of contributing to its problems. But she hadn't been wrong. If he didn't deal with the long-term consequences of his neglect he _would_ lose the bar. It was as if he was trying to make his fears come true so he wouldn't have to work through them. If that was his mindset, it would explain why he was trying to shelter her from the paper by turning down her offers to help with it, even though he complained nearly every day about how much work it was.

"Letting him down is the last thing you'd do," Crumb said. 

Much as she appreciated his loyalty, she wasn't sure he was right. The half-formed realizations that had surfaced mid-argument came clearer now, though they were twisted with worry. If Gary had gotten in trouble or been hurt somewhere, he was waiting for her to come after him, and he was afraid she wouldn't because they'd fought. Deep down, he was terrified of being left alone.

"Are you sure there was nothing else on the news?" she asked Crumb.

"About the deli?"

"About anything like the deli. Near misses. Fires or robberies or car crashes or accidents of any kind."

"You know how many of those Chicago gets in an afternoon?"

Far too well. "Was there anything you heard about and wondered why Gary hadn't stopped it? Or that made you wonder if he had been there?"

He hesitated, as if trying to decide whether he should let on that he knew exactly what she meant. "If he stopped it, it wouldn't be news, would it?"

"It would if he was hurt or missed it somehow." For example, if he was off somewhere sulking about what she'd said. In which case, anything he'd missed was her fault. She pulled her phone out of her purse. "I'm going to check in at McGinty's to see if he's shown up."

"Good idea."

A.J. confirmed that Gary had indeed been wearing jeans and a plaid shirt when he left after lunch, but he also reported that there'd been no sign of Gary at all since they'd headed for the deli.

They started down the street toward the lot where Crumb had parked. "Where did you say he went first?" he asked.

"Before the deli there was a lecture at UC's new building along the river. A science lecture, I think he said." She left out the part about the fight Gary had planned to stop.

Crumb snorted. "Oh, yeah, sounds like it's right up his alley. Curb," he added, as if Spike hadn't already signaled her. They crossed a street so busy she could feel the whoosh of traffic alongside them. "When you can't figure out where to go next, you need to go back to the beginning. First lesson of police work. Well, maybe the second. First rule is don't get dead."

Marissa tried to repress a shudder, but of course Crumb didn't miss it. "He's all right, you know that. Heck, by the time we get back to McGinty's, I bet he's sitting there with his feet up on a table, sucking down Heinekens."

"I hope you're right." Even if he was still sulking. She'd take cranky Gary over missing Gary any day of the week.

* * * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tagliotti was played by Felicity Huffman in the pilot episode of _Early Edition_. Which wasn't a problem at all until about a month ago...yeah. Anyway. If you're looking for another actress to fill that role while this story plays out, I'm going to go with an idea from JayneL and suggest Vera Farmiga. But of course if you have another idea, go with it...or, as one of my creative writing students liked to write on all her peer critiques, "You do you, Boo!"


	6. Chapter 6

_And though tomorrow's on my mind_  
 _I guess I gotta give it time_  
 _Oh, Chicago knows how small we are_  
 _How bright she shines in the dark_  
 _Oh, and though I go, she's in my heart_  
 _Chicago holds me when I fall apart_  
_~Brian Kenig Mazzaferri and Wells Greg_

* * *

"I'm sorry, sir. The only pets allowed at this property are service animals."

Gary stared at the clerk, fighting the urge to take out everything he was feeling on another unsuspecting peon. He'd already had to talk this one into letting him pay for a hotel room with cash because, as the final cherry on top of the disaster sundae this day had become, all three of his credit cards had been declined. "Probably a computer glitch," the clerk had said, which was entirely possible given the clunky machine he was using. It looked like it was over a decade old.

"No pets is fine with me."

"What about your cat?" The clerk pointed to a spot right behind Gary. He turned, and there was the damn tabby that had shadowed him all afternoon.

"That's not my cat." Turning back to the desk, Gary nudged the offending animal away with his foot. Its yowls of protest were muffled in the coat of the doorman who picked it up and carried it away. 

Maybe this was a case of identity theft, Gary thought as he took the elevator to his room. Being a victim of the hottest new crime wasn't exactly comforting, but at least it was something real, something he could get his brain around. Especially since his theory about Chuck pulling a practical joke was becoming less and less likely with every revelation.

He spent another wasted hour using the room phone to contact anyone who might know him, including his cell phone provider, who had no record of his account. Ever. They were anxious to set one up for him until they found out he had no working credit card and no references they could verify. 

All of which meant this couldn't be identity theft. That might have taken away computer records of his accounts, but not the existence of everyone he knew. Not his _wife_ , damn it. 

Seething with frustration, he sat on the bed and ran through all the television channels with a remote that was as outdated as the computers at the front desk. The only familiar programs were _Sports Night_ , which had a new actress in the lead role this season, and _Law and Order_ reruns. No breaking news about how the entire world had gone insane. He ached from head to toe, probably from running all over the city trying to figure out what the hell was going on. A soak in the hot tub might have helped, but he only had the clothes on his back. He didn't think they'd allow him to hang out in public in his boxers. 

Sometime after nine, he made his way down to the hotel bar. There weren't any answers at the bottom of the first tumbler of Scotch, but toward the middle of the third, he did find some degree of—what? He couldn't call it comfort. More like a reason to forget everything and everyone he'd ever known for a couple of hours. 

Which was about right, seeing as they had all forgotten him.

* * * * *

After an hour or so of stumbling around neighborhoods he thought he knew, cataloguing minute differences between his memory and what he saw now, Gary found himself back at the intersection of Franklin and Illinois. The parking garage was still there. McGinty's was still...not.

The rain had stopped, but it was getting late. Real dark was closing in around him, the streets were clearing out, and there was no sign of the L that usually came by every few minutes. Maybe it was his own sense of dread and confusion combined with what he'd learned at the precinct that made him feel there was something decidedly unsafe about the neighborhood. But then again, judging by how few other people were out and about, maybe it was something more sinister.

The bank on Illinois Street was still there, and he needed more than the forty bucks he had left in his wallet if he was going to find a place to spend the night. Dry clothes would be nice, too. Keeping a lookout in his peripheral vision, he slipped his card into the bank's ATM and punched in his PIN. He could have sworn he heard a metallic burp as the machine spat out a blank receipt and told him to contact his bank in the morning. It did not give back his card.

He couldn't be overdrawn. He was never overdrawn. It had to be part of this whole ridiculous, unbelievably crappy day. His credit card was as useless as his bank card, though he should have been able to withdraw at least five hundred dollars in cash. As stunned and flat-out exhausted as he was, he couldn't deal with calling the bank and getting lost in a voicemail system. Even if he did get hold of an actual human being, they would probably deny all knowledge of his existence. Like the guy at Marissa's place had said, he was a ghost.

But Crumb was the one who was dead. 

Being a ghost didn't stop Gary from slamming a fist into the machine. Which confirmed the solidity of the ATM and the existence of pain receptors in his hand, as well as his ability to let out a string of curses that would have put Crumb's Navy-trained vocabulary to shame.

Running his aching hand through his hair, massaging his equally aching head, he slumped against the rough brick wall. Had Marissa been there, she would have told him he needed food, and for once, she would have been right. He was too lightheaded, damp, and sore to think straight about much else, so he spent five dollars on take-out spaghetti and garlic bread at a tiny hole-in-the-wall diner, then took a bus to the North Avenue Beach, his favorite place to think. There were only a few people out on a summer night that should have filled the park with bikers, runners, and kids now that the rain was over. As far as Gary was concerned it was a good thing. It meant the bench he always thought of as his own was free. Wet, but free. His stomach growled as he pried open the take-out tray. For the first night in a long time, he didn't have to share his food. There was no Spike to beg for his meatballs, no Cat to lick butter and sauce off his fingers. 

There was no Cat, and that made no sense. No matter how off the rails things had gotten in the past couple years, Cat had always been there. Gary had come to count on that, despite his complaints. He'd counted on a lot of things. Not only Cat, but McGinty's and the paper, not to mention Marissa, Crumb, and, up until a couple months ago, Chuck. Now all he had left of his life were a well-used copy of the _Sun-Times_ , the clothes on his back, a bus pass, and thirty-four dollars and change.

Every step he'd taken that afternoon had pushed him deeper into confusion. He existed, or someone with his name did, but somehow he was still married to Marcia. Marissa didn't want anything to do with him. No McGinty's, no Cat, and Crumb was—

His stomach lurched, and he dropped his plastic fork into the spaghetti, staring out over the lake at the waves churned up by the storm. He didn't want to imagine a Chicago without Crumb, let alone live in it. It was wrong. Everything was wrong, had been wrong since there hadn't been a fire at the deli that didn't exist, even though the story was still in the paper. It had all started in the deli. 

No. It had started at the lecture where no one was hurt. There had been no fight. Just Gary tripping down the stairs and getting yelled at by a professor. "So why the hell did the paper send me there?" he wondered aloud, then remembered there was no Cat to talk to. 

As if talking to Cat was somehow more reasonable than talking to himself.

He paged through the paper, hoping against hope for a clue or a message. The only things that had changed since lunchtime were the toned-down story about the fire at the deli and the one about the fight at the Gleacher Center, which had been replaced by an ad for Mad Randy's House of Sausage. That lecture had to be the starting point for everything going wrong. His tumble down the stairs, which would normally have been no big deal, had left him with a pounding headache and a slightly sore ankle, and there had been the weird shaking right before the guy in the suit had run into him. But how could any of that have led to everything Gary knew disappearing? Still, he supposed it was a place to start. In the morning, once the new paper came and he'd checked it for emergencies and clues, he'd find the professor. Go back to the beginning, just as Crumb had always told him.

Crumb _had_ told him. The guy was so gruff, so Chicago, so real, Gary half expected him to walk out of the gathering fog and sit down on the bench next to him. The Christmas bomber hadn't killed anyone, and Crumb had retired a decorated veteran, to work at the bar and take long fishing vacations. 

Anything else wasn't the real world. It couldn't be.

"You gonna eat that?" A grizzled man in a stained overcoat, a man who was definitely not Crumb, stood before the bench, eyeing the remains of Gary's meal.

"Nah, take it." Gary held the container out to him.

"Thanks." The man tucked the container under his coat, his gaze shifting around in a paranoid frenzy. "You got any change?"

None he could spare. "Sorry."

"S'okay." Still clutching the spaghetti under his coat, the man shuffled a few steps toward the parking lot, then turned back. "You don't plan to stay here all night, do you?"

Gary blinked and looked around. While he'd been trying to figure things out, almost everyone else had left. Other than a guy walking his dog along the lakefront, Gary was alone with the panhandler. He got to his feet. "You want the bench?"

"Not if you paid me, buddy." He shook his head and went on his way, muttering, "Not for a million bucks."

As Gary watched him go, the faint breeze tickling the back of his neck turned sinister. The lights of the handful of boats out on the lake seemed very far away. Maybe the guy had been right to be wary, but the bench was one of the few things still in its proper place. Cat had come here before. It could find Gary and bring him the paper, which had better have answers, in the morning.

He flopped down hard on the bench. Was he really considering sleeping in the park? Yes, because the sooner he went to sleep, the sooner morning would come. Maybe then he'd wake up from this nightmare.

* * * * *

By the time they found the Gleacher Center, it was closed for the night. "Locked up tighter than a drum major," Crumb said.

A faint breeze carried the scent of the lake their way. "There's a bench on North Avenue Beach," Marissa told him. "Gary goes there sometimes to think."

"Hobson thinks? That's a new one," Crumb muttered, but he drove there anyway. "What are we looking for?" he asked when they got out of his car.

"Any sign of Gary. Or his cat," she added, earning a derisive snort. "There's a bench where the walking path curves toward the pier. That's where he usually goes." She let Spike lead her there, and when he sat down in front of it, signaling it was empty, she perched on its edge, one hand flat in the spot where Gary should have been. "Do you see anything?" she asked Crumb.

He eased himself down next to her. "Not a thing. Sorry." 

"Damn it, Gary," she said, half under her breath.

"We'll find him, kiddo. Don't you worry."

Wasn't worrying her job? A strange, sharp breeze tickled the back of her neck, and Spike stood at attention, wagging his tail so it beat against her shin. _Thump, thump, thump_. "You're sure there's nothing? Maybe some kind of clue? A newspaper? He always has one," she added quickly.

"That he does. But I don't see anything like that around here. Want me to check the trash can?" Given the mood he'd been in, she wouldn't put it past Gary to dump the paper, but Crumb didn't find anything. "Where to next?" he asked when he rejoined her.

She couldn't think of any other place to look, and here on the bench she felt more connected to Gary than she had all day. A deep breath brought her the scent of wet newsprint and ink and a beer-stained shirt. "I know you won't believe me, but I'd swear he's here right now somehow, or that he just left." 

"Don't tell me," Crumb said with a groan. "More heebie-jeebies?"

"Something like that." There was a lot she could tell him about what had happened in that very spot a couple months ago, back when he, Gary, and Chuck had been captured and send out on the lake in a sinking ship by the mob. But she knew better than to bring it up. Crumb clung to his skepticism about the things that happened around Gary's paper like a security blanket. She waited a minute longer, hoping against hope that something would change, that Gary would walk out of whatever darkness he'd wandered into and ask why the hell they were hanging out in the park at night. The odd certainty he was there, or had been, didn't fade, but finally she said, "If you're sure he's not here now, we should probably go home."

"I'm not sure I can be sure about anything, kiddo."

Back at McGinty's—"No Hobson, no Heinekens," Crumb reported—they got on the phones, Marissa in the office, Crumb out at the bar. Luckily Sarah, who'd been waitressing for them for over a year, and A.J., who was second only to Crumb in terms of having a mental file of drinks recipes and the ability to save patrons from themselves, were on the evening shift. They never asked many questions about what Gary did, but they were always willing to help run things when the paper's errands distracted him and left Marissa juggling his duties along with her own.

She sat down in the office with a listing of every hospital in the county and started making calls. She couldn't shake a crawling sensation along her arms when she remembered Gary snapping at her about ending up in the hospital if she tried to help with the paper. When she hung up with the operator at Chicago Hope, she took a moment to breathe through a rising sense of panic. She'd been at that hospital, close to death, because she'd been about to go to Egypt with Ali. Because she'd been about to leave Chicago, the bar, and Gary. Looking back, she couldn't even remember why the idea had appealed to her so strongly. Maybe it had been that Ali seemed to be listening to what she had to say.

Seemed to be, though; that was the key phrase. He'd used her, and if she'd had a chance to talk to Gary about the decision to go with Ali before she'd made it, she might not have chosen to go. Looking back now, she could see it from Gary's perspective, which explained a lot about some of the things he'd said that afternoon. In his mind, she wouldn't have met Ali and wouldn't have gotten sick if she hadn't gone to the museum to help him save the archaeologist. Somehow Gary thought everything that had happened as a result was the paper trying to take away another one of his friends, and now he was worried, whether he realized it consciously or not, that if she got too involved with the paper he'd lose his last source of support.

"He's so clueless sometimes," she said out loud, but Spike's jingling tags from the sofa reminded her that Cat, to whom she usually complained about Gary because no one else could possibly understand, hadn't been around all afternoon either. The realization prompted her to dial the next hospital. Decoding Gary's issues wouldn't do her a bit of good if he never came home, and if he really was feeling abandoned, aggressively looking for him would be one way to put those fears to rest.

She knew Crumb had put her on the hospital calls because Gary being in one of them would mean a better outcome than finding him in any of the places Crumb was calling. She also knew he'd tell her the minute he heard anything, no matter how bad it was. The fact he hadn't come back to the office was somewhat comforting. 

Of course, a thought like that set her up to go shooting out of her chair the moment the office door did open. Which was exactly what happened after she thanked the operator at St. Margaret Mercy in Hammond for never having heard of Gary and not having any John Does admitted that day. The door creaked open and a heavy tread rounded the divider.

"Crumb?" Marissa dropped the phone on her desk and jumped to her feet. "What is it? Did you find him?"

"Nope, nothing yet. Considering I've checked every precinct, the jails, and the morgue, that's good news." He reached past her and put the phone back in its cradle. "You?"

"Nothing at the hospitals." She sank back down into her chair. 

"What about Fishman?"

"I tried." It had been a difficult call to make. If Gary was going to unload to anyone about their disagreement, it would have been Chuck, who was always more than happy to side with Gary against her. "His cell phone went straight to voicemail. Where could Gary be?"

"No idea." Crumb moved past her as he spoke, and Gary's chair squeaked. "It's like he walked out of the deli and vanished." 

The defeated admission made Marissa feel as though someone had wrapped hands around her neck. "Gary's only disappeared like this twice before. There was Marley, and the time he was trapped in the theater, and—oh. Three times, with you and Chuck on the boat. All those times he was in serious trouble."

"You found him before. We'll find him again."

She picked up her mouse, set it down, and twirled a letter opener between her fingers instead. "Do you really think it was him at the deli?"

"The guy was awfully sure about that picture." The squeaking of the chair became rhythmic. "Maybe Hobson went undercover."

"To stop a deli fire?"

"Maybe they gave him a makeover at that fancy business school. Eyebrow wax, manicure, the works." He waited for a laugh, but she couldn't rouse one. "Look, Marissa, I don't know what else we can do tonight. We know he's kicking around somewhere because he's not in any of the places where he would be if he wasn't kicking. So to speak. I've got a call in to a couple of buddies at the precinct. They'll keep a look out for him, but until we know more, there's not much to do but wait."

"Waiting sucks." 

"You ain't wrong about that." His chair groaned. "A.J.'s closing up shop out there. Let me give you a ride home."

She shook her head. "I'll sleep in here on the couch." It wouldn't be the first time.

"You sure? It doesn't look too comfortable."

"If he comes home, I want to know. And if he's in trouble and tries to get hold of us, I'm pretty sure he'll try here first."

"Give him a piece of your mind for me when he does." He gave her shoulder an awkward, anchoring pat. "Then call me. I'll come by first thing tomorrow if I don't hear from you."

"I thought you were leaving for Idaho. You've been looking forward to your fishing trip all spring."

"Fish can wait." 

If he was putting off his trip, he really did think something was wrong. "Thanks, Crumb." 

"Hey, it's what I do. Hobson'll turn up, like a bad turnip." Once again, he waited a beat for a laugh she couldn't offer. "He always has before."

Fighting off the insidious voice that whispered there was a first time for everything, Marissa went to help A.J. close up the bar.

* * * * *


	7. Chapter 7

_This is not to say that there are not Chicagoans. But I would suggest that they are a nomadic people whose lost home exists only in their minds…a great idea of a second city, lit with life and love, reasonable drink prices at cool bars, and of course, blocks and blocks of bright and devastating fire._  
_~John Hodgman_

 

* * *

Gary didn't wake up to the cat. He didn't wake up to the paper. He woke up to someone stealing his wallet.

"What the—get away!" Trying to swivel from the hand that had slipped through the bench slats into his back pocket and swat at the guy to whom the hand was attached, Gary tumbled off the bench and onto the dewy ground. He pushed his cramped, aching self off the grass, only to be slammed back down by a booted foot.

He fought for breath as he stared up through a slant of dawning light that had caught him square in the eyes, into the shadowed face of his attacker.

Attackers, plural. While the kid with the boot held him down, another knelt beside him, dangling Gary's wallet with one hand. He popped open a switchblade with the other and pushed the point into the flesh under Gary's chin. "What else you got?"

"Nothing. I swear." Gary coughed out the last word as the heel pressed harder into his chest. 

Boot Guy leaned into him. Gary fought to breathe against his crushing weight. "What's a rich guy doing sleeping in the park?"

"I'm not rich."

Knife Guy laughed and pressed the blade in harder. Gary's skin stung and broke as he pulled the knife down alongside his throat, pressing the point in deep enough to draw blood. He handed Gary's wallet to his partner. "Not anymore. We got your credit cards." 

Boot Guy held up the few bills Gary had left. "And your cash." Laughing, he lifted his foot off Gary's chest and took a step back. Gary had half a second to draw in air before the guy drove his boot straight into his gut. "Come on. We've got money to spend."

Gary reached out, trying to grab a bootlace or a pant leg, but ended up with nothing but air in his hands. Which was more than he could say for his lungs. 

Curled around the worst of the hurt, he lay on the ground for a minute, listening to the receding footfalls and trying to convince himself it wasn't so bad. None of his cards worked, and he doubted the driver's license was valid. But losing the cash and the bus pass that had worked when his credit cards didn't, that hurt. Almost as much as his gut. He rolled onto one side to push himself up and saw the paper under the park bench.

"Please," he whispered through his teeth. It was too late to stop his own mugging, but where else could he get the answers he needed? "Please be tomorrow's."

It wasn't. It was yesterday's, or rather, today's, the same soggy bundle of newsprint he'd had stuffed in his back pocket all night. Joints popping and cracking, Gary pulled himself to his feet, slammed the paper onto the bench, and started away, though not as fast or as forcefully as he would have liked. Moving hurt. Not just his torso, but his head again, too. A dozen steps toward the lake and the rising sun, he stopped and rubbed at the cut under his jaw, shivering in his damp shirt. "Damn it," he said to no one in particular, then went back for the paper. It was useless, but other than his clothes it was the only trace he had left of his own life. He looked through it, as if the flimsy pages could tell him what to do next. But if he hadn't been given a warning about being mugged, he probably wasn't going to get any news ahead of time, not today anyway. Not here, wherever here was.

After everything else that had been taken from him, losing his wallet shouldn't have mattered. But it did. It pissed him off, almost as much as the sirens wailing down Lake Shore Drive and crashing into his skull, magnifying his headache.

Police sirens.

By the time they dopplered away and were gone, Gary was on his way to the precinct. It was a long walk, but it would be worth it. He was the victim of a crime. Detective Tagliotti would have to listen to him now.

* * * * *

Gary woke up with the kind of hangover he hadn't had since college. A hot shower did little for his aches and pains, but roused him enough to remember why he was in a hotel, and why he'd tried to obliterate the day before with too much Scotch.

His car was missing. His job. His home. His wife. His whole life. 

Wrapped in a towel, he staggered out of the bathroom and sat down hard on the bed. The room lurched around him, not in the pleasant spinning way it had the night before, but in a way that brought stomach acid up his throat too fast. He hadn't eaten since the deli sandwich, so there wasn't anything to come up with it.

He lay on the bed, focusing on the ceiling and wishing it would stop tilting, until the pissed-off yowl of a cat just outside his door cut into his headache like a buzz saw.

"For the love of God." He stalked to the door, holding the towel with one hand. "This is a hotel. People sleep here." He yanked the door open, ready to let the cat's owner have it with both barrels. But there wasn't any owner, just a cat on a newspaper. The same cat that had followed him around yesterday. He tried to kick it away, but it ducked under his foot and shot into his room. Muttering a curse on itinerant house pets, he bent down to pick up the complementary copy of the _Sun-Times_. The ache that shot from one temple to the other made him think better of that. He toed the paper into the room and shut the door. The cat sat on the bed watching him.

"I don't know where you came from," Gary told him, "but you're going back."

The young man who answered his call to the front desk had a voice that was almost as scratchy as the cat's. "There's a cat in your room? I'm sorry, sir, but pets aren't allowed in this hotel."

"That's why I'm calling you."

"I'm not allowed to make any exceptions, sir."

"I don't want an exception. He's only in my room because I didn't want him to bother the other guests!" 

"I'd be happy to recommend a kennel."

"It's not my cat. Send somebody up here to take it away, will you?"

"You're giving away your own cat?" the kid squeaked, as if it were a worse crime than stealing babies.

"First come, first served. If you don't send someone, I'll flush the damn thing down the toilet." He dropped the phone into its cradle. The cat jumped onto the floor and pawed the newspaper. Gary stalked past it into the bathroom, provoking confused mewing. While he shaved with the nearly-useless disposable razor the hotel had provided, the cat came over and rubbed against his leg. Gary was about to kick it away again, but he stopped at the thought that, stray or not, here was the only being who seemed to know him. He didn't have time to tell himself how pathetic that was before the cat seemed to realize it too. It backed away, staring up at him with intense green eyes.

"What?"

The cat's response was a meow that he could have sworn ended on a question mark. It butted his leg again, then backed up. "Yeah, I don't know either," Gary muttered.

Shaving finished, he headed out to the main room to change. He considered the paper for a moment and then picked it up. Maybe Marcia had gone to the police or the press. But the local news was dominated by the derailment of a Metra train. There was nothing about a missing financial advisor.

His shirt was limp from having been worn once already and spattered with frying pan grease, but what choice did he have? He'd barely tugged it on when the cat jumped on top of the paper again. It pawed at the front page until the story about the derailment ripped in half.

"That's it." Head pounding, Gary got an arm around the cat, who dug his claws into the paper so hard that half of it came with him. Gary dumped the whole screeching mess into the bathroom and shut the door, then leaned against it, wincing and fingering a rip halfway down his sleeve. At least he wasn't bleeding.

This couldn't go on any longer. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he had to get his life back. He snatched up his jacket, wallet, and keys and flung open the door, only to find a maintenance worker poised to knock.

"The front desk said you're having trouble with your toilet, sir?"

Gary grimaced and pointed to the bathroom. "Yeah. Hairball," he said, and stalked off to the elevators.

* * * * *

"Welcome back, Chuckie!" Chuck's secretary waved a little brush dripping with purple fingernail polish at him while he escorted a couple of studio reps out of his office. Chuck gritted his teeth, told his guests good-bye, and turned back to the reception desk.

"Cindy," he began, trying to be patient. It wasn't easy. "In the first place, I've been here for an hour, meeting with those very nice, very influential gentlemen. I was disappointed you weren't here to welcome them." She might have garnered the interest he hadn't been able to. "In the second place, I've asked you not to call me Chuckie, especially in front of my business associates."

Her face fell. "Oh, I'm sorry, Charlie. I guess I forgot."

The headache that Chuck had been nursing since he'd been hit with the smog-filtered LA sun at six that morning kicked up a notch. "I'm not Charlie. I'm Mr. Fishman." Chuck gave each syllable its own emphasis, as he had at least once a day for the past three weeks. "Mr. Charles Fishman. And while we're on the subject, it's not 'Fishburger' or 'Fishfry', but Fish _man_. Mis-ter Fish-man."

Tinted-contact-blue eyes wide, Cindy mouthed it along with him, her full lips flashing a startling, radioactive pink.

Chuck sighed and gave up, as he had every day before. "Any messages while I was in the meeting?"

"Somebody's called, like, a whole bunch of times. There were messages on the machine when I got in, and then she started in on me live. She was really rude." Cindy's head toss swung her blonde mane back and forth. She sniffed and went back to painting her nails. "She kept saying she was from Chicago, like that was supposed to impress me."

"Cindy, _I'm_ from Chicago, remember?" Chuck asked himself, again, why he'd hired her. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, at the time he'd been lounging at the condo pool, several sheets to the wind, and she'd been wearing a string bikini that was more sting than bikini. That was LA; the sharks came in more than one guise, and sometimes they turned out to be puffer fish. "So who called?"

Cindy waved a hand in front of her face. "Martha or Tricia, something like that."

Chuck mentally ran down the list of old girlfriends, but he couldn't remember one with either of those names. Cousins? Nope.

" _Any_ way," Cindy continued, "she was a real harpie. She kept yabbering away about some guy named Harry or Greg or something. And crumpets. English food is really high in fat, you know. That's why the girls there are so pudgy." Shrugging, she took one last look at her nails, and, with a satisfied nod, opened her top desk drawer and swept all her paraphernalia into it with her elbows.

Chuck wished he could climb into her head and pull out the real message, though that would be scarier than _The Exorcist_. She'd been sniffing that nail polish too long. He didn't know a Greg or a Harry, and no one he knew ate crump...oh. 

Greg plus Harry.

_Oh_.

Chuck leaned forward, hands on the now-bare desk, and stared into Cindy's vacant eyes. "Was it Gary?"

"Who?" she asked innocently.

"The phone message." The metal desk resisted Chuck's curling fingers.

"No, it was a woman. I told you that."

"I mean, was it Gary she was talking about?" Martha or Tricia. "Was her name Marissa?"

Cindy blinked. "It could have been. It was hard to tell, the way she was yelling at me. Look, I have to take an early lunch today, okay, Chuckie? My toy poodle's astrologer is going on vacation, and I have to pick up her charts." 

Chuck hardly heard her. Marissa yelling? And rude? The only time he'd ever heard her approach rude was when she was arguing with him. What could he have done to make her angry from this distance? He hadn't spoken to her in weeks. Gary, now…

Gary.

Marissa had been trying to leave a message about Gary, overnight and early in the morning. She'd tried more than once to get past the ever-annoying Cindy. Warning bells clamored in his brain. "What did you say to her?" He picked up the phone and dialed Gary's number while Cindy stuffed a copy of Cosmo, sandwiched between the heels of her hands, into her bag.

"I told her you were in an important meeting and she should call back next week." Cindy nodded earnestly as she stood.

Chuck's jaw dropped. "You didn't." He got Gary's answering machine and hung up.

Cindy sniffed indignantly. "You said not to disturb you."

"Look, Cindy." Chuck leaned through the nail polish fumes to get right in her face. "I'm going to say this once, but I want you to remember it always. If anyone ever calls from Chicago, anyone, you put them through to me. Right. Away."

"But only if you're not in a meeting, right?"

"Wrong! Look, I don't care if Stephen Spielberg shows up to talk locations and George Lucas walks in with a suitcase full of cash. You put them—Gary, Marissa, Crumb." He stabbed the desk with his finger, once for each name. "Any of them, anyone from Chicago, you put them through, do you understand?"

"Sure thing, Chuckie! I mean, Mr. Fishcan." She giggled. "I gotta go, okay?"

Chuck waved her off and dialed McGinty's. One of the bartenders answered and put him through to the office.

"Gary?" Marissa's voice was wound extra tight. This wasn't good.

"Nope," he said, dread sinking into his stomach. "It's the next best thing."

"Chuck? Oh, thank God. I didn't think I'd ever get through to you."

"Yeah, Cindy's, um, new. What's up?"

He heard the breath she drew before she said, "Gary's missing. You haven't heard from him, have you?"

"Not since last week. What do you mean, missing? Since when?"

"Yesterday afternoon. Crumb and I have been looking for him since last night. I don't mean to scare you, but there's no one else I can talk to about this." 

"You got me now. Is it the paper?" They both knew about its demands, and how compelled Gary felt to follow through on them, no matter how dangerous or just plain stupid they were.

She told him what she knew, which wasn't much. Gary'd run off to save the day a couple times over, as usual, and he never came back. "You sure there wasn't a monkey involved?"

"No monkey. I was listening this time."

Chuck winced. It had taken him a while to forgive himself for not paying attention to what Gary had said about going to the abandoned theater when he'd ended up trapped in it. Marissa probably hadn't forgiven herself at all. "He's okay. He's always okay." Even as he said it, Chuck tried to banish a parade of images: Gary staggering half-frozen out of an abandoned warehouse; Gary ducking into a fire with only a bomber jacket for protection; Gary flying off the hood of a car and landing with a sickening thud on a bridge. "You want me to come back?"

Marissa was silent for a second. "You don't need to," she finally said. "Crumb's on the case, and I'll call you as soon as I know anything. Thanks for getting back to me, though. I've been up all night, and I needed to hear someone who knows him say he'll turn up."

"Tell me when he does. Let me give you my cell number."

"I have it. I left messages there, too."

"You did?" Chuck pulled the cell out of his pocket, realizing with a guilty start that it had been turned off since he'd hit a lucky streak at the blackjack table in Vegas the afternoon before. "It's on now, so you call that number if anything happens, okay?"

"I will, and hopefully I'll be able to put Gary on the line. Thanks, Chuck."

"You bet. Anything for Gar." Chuck clicked the connection closed. Drumming his fingers on Cindy's desk, he thought for a moment, then placed another call, this time to his travel agent. She assured him there would be a ticket to Chicago waiting for him when he got to LAX. It was the closest he'd come to Hollywood magic in three months of trying.

* * * * *

Gary rubbed the cat scratches on his arm and threw a glance at the taxi meter. He had to get to the police station and straighten things out before all his cash was gone. "Isn't there some way around this mess?"

The cabbie shrugged, pointed to his radio. "Word is, that derailment's got traffic snarled all over this part of town. Might as well relax."

"Derailment? Again?"

"I don't know about 'again', but yeah. Metra line went off the rails. Probably hit some idiot who stalled out. Hope nobody got hurt, but it sounds pretty bad."

"Didn't a train go off the tracks down here yesterday? Three people injured, that's what the paper said."

"I never heard about it. But I didn't get a chance to watch the news last night. If that's right, though, you'd think people would be more careful. You mind if I listen to sports radio while we wait?"

"No." Gary sat back in his seat with a frustrated grunt. This had to work. The police helped people, especially innocent citizens who'd had their lives stripped away. If it was Chuck orchestrating all this, he would press whatever charges he could. Sure, they'd been friends once, but Chuck had been so pissed at him for so long, Gary could barely remember what that had been like. And as it turned out, Marcia'd been right: Chuck had held him back. Cutting off their friendship had been the last, best thing Chuck had ever done for Gary. Marcia, though...damn. The loss hit him like a sledgehammer all over again. Where was Marcia?

He swallowed back the wave of fear threatening to drown him every time he realized Chuck couldn't have done all this, no matter how much he might want to. The only other credible possibility was that he was losing his mind, but there was no reason for that to be happening, and he sure as hell didn't feel crazy. It was the rest of the world that had gone completely insane.

"How far is it to the police station?" he asked the cabbie. He had to raise his voice over the sounds of an argument about who the Sox should use as a closer in that night's game with the Twins.

"'Bout half a mile."

Which would take an hour at least, if this kept up. There were fire trucks and ambulances inching toward the rail line, each with one set of wheels up on the sidewalk, while the stalled traffic tried to squeeze together to give them room.

Gary threw a couple bills at the front seat. "I'll walk. It's probably quicker."

The driver snorted. "Good luck."

* * * * *

Tagliotti was surprisingly glad to see Gary when he walked into her office. She pushed a wave of blonde hair out of her eyes and fixed him with a strange half-smile. "We've been looking for you, Mr. Hobson."

"Good thing, 'cause I was just robbed at knifepoint." That got a reaction; her eyes and mouth went round. "I slept on a park bench, up at North Avenue Beach, and when I woke up these guys were—" He broke off. She was still staring. "Don't you have to take notes or something?"

"Oh, I will." Tagliotti leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. "Right now I'm trying to figure out why a smart guy like you was sleeping on a bench while your wife was waiting for you in a pricy house in Lincoln Park."

Gary gaped at her. "You think I'm smart?"

"Not so much anymore, no."

"Wait a minute." Lincoln Park. G. & M. Hobson. "My _wife_?"

"She called us last night." Tagliotti looked him up and down, one eyebrow lifted. "Prominent businessman goes missing. His wife, an even more prominent attorney, files a report. It leapfrogs the standard missing persons window, lands on every desk, including mine."

Why would Marcia be looking for him? "Are you sure it was my wife, not my business partner? Marissa Clark?"

"Nope." She handed him a fax. There it was in black and white. Marcia Hobson, a name she hadn't used in two years. Looking for him. The address matched the one he'd found in the phone book. 

Tagliotti's mouth curled in the same wry way it had yesterday, at least until she'd dropped that two-ton bomb about Crumb on his head. "It's not my business where you spend your nights, or who you spend them with, but you could save this department a whole lot of trouble if you'd invent a convincing story for your wife ahead of time."

Gary had no idea what was going on. The only thing that seemed real was the pain in his bruised side. "If I did that, would you have time to deal with the fact that I've been robbed?"

She sighed. "Petty crimes aren't my jurisdiction."

"Petty?" He pointed to the cut under his jaw. "They had a knife. They took everything I had!"

"Not your wife, nor your home. You don't seem very eager to get back to them. What's going on here, Hobson?"

He tossed the fax back onto her desk and slumped back in the chair, wincing at the sharp ache in his side. "I have no idea."

Tagliotti studied him for a long moment. "I'll take your statement, and Officer Yamada will take you home. But if you ever want to tell me what's really going on, and what Crumb has to do with it, you know where to find me."

"I'd be happy to do that if I had any idea myself."

Tagliotti pulled a form out of a drawer. "Let's get this over with. It's not as though I have time for you. Today alone we're dealing with a burglary and a shooting, both last night, and my forensics team got pulled to work a derailment down south." 

If he'd had the paper, she wouldn't have needed to worry about those things. Yesterday would have been a hell of a day for him, but he would have found a way to stop them. Maybe then she'd have time to help him. Then again, if he had the paper, he wouldn't have needed her help.

She frowned at a faint metallic rattle; the file cabinets shook for a second or two, and Gary's headache flared. "Was that an earthquake?" he asked when the pain eased back to a bearable level.

"Probably a truck on the street." She turned the fax so he could read it. "Got your address. Is that your current phone?"

"I don't know." He flinched at the glare she shot him. "Sure, why not? But all that stuff you said was happening, the robberies and the shootings, didn't anyone stop them?"

"Preventative policing? Nice idea, but we both know that's not the Chicago we live in." She tapped the address on the fax. "At least it's not the one I live in." 

There was something going on here, maybe about the paper, maybe not. It played at the edge of Gary's thoughts, frustratingly out of reach. Last night he'd been sure she was withholding information. "What about the guy who was there when Crumb died? He tried to warn him, didn't he? Where's he been since then?" He couldn't imagine what she was thinking as she sized him up. "I need to know this. And then you can call my wife and cross one more thing off your to-do list."

She sighed and looked out across the bullpen. "Even if I could give you that information, you wouldn't be able to talk to this guy, not without—" She wiggled her fingers and waited, but Gary didn't get it. She sighed and picked up a pen. "Let's just say I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Speaking of which, tell me about your run-in this morning."

* * * * *

"You're here to report identity theft?" The young officer who'd led Gary to her desk waited for his nod, then typed something into her computer so quickly her fingers blurred. "Name?"

"Gary Hobson," said the cop at the next desk over. He gave Gary a mock salute. The man sitting next to his desk was handcuffed and looked like he was coming off a three-day bender with a headache to rival Gary's. "What's going on this time, Hobson? Cat up a tree?"

Gary stared at him, perplexed, while a couple other cops laughed. At least they were friendly laughs. He let out a completely fake chuckle, because it seemed to be expected, and they all turned back to their own work. Trying to ignore the distinctly creepy feeling that everyone here knew him, Gary gave Officer Lansky all the details she asked for: credit card numbers, address, place of employment.

"What makes you think your identity's been compromised?" she asked.

Where to even begin? "My credit cards don't work."

"Maybe you maxed them out."

"No, my accounts have _disappeared_. The bank doesn't even know my name. My car's gone, too."

Her eyes lit up as if she'd won the jackpot. "You want to report a stolen vehicle?" He nodded and gave her more details. She frowned over the theft from a valet garage, but hell, so had he. "You believe your BMW was stolen right out from under the valet?"

"I know it was." Gary's back teeth ground together as he tried to hold onto his last shred of patience. "I checked every inch of that place myself." 

"Why didn't you report it yesterday?"

"I was too busy trying to find out what happened to my wife. There were strangers in my house, and one of them hit me with a frying pan!"

Officer Lansky's frown deepened. "Sir, are you sure it was your house?"

"Of course it was my house. Just like the red BMW is my car. My wife is missing, too. Marcia Hobson, she's a lawyer, and she's going to be suing the hell out of whoever did this. You need to stop looking at me like that." Instead of writing down the details, Lansky was staring hard at him. He was not crazy. He _wasn't_. "I want you to investigate the guy who's responsible for all of it. His name is Chuck Fishman."

"Chuck Fishman?" She typed in the words without looking back at the computer. Funny, Gary thought, this one needed updating just as much as the one at the hotel. Big clunky monitor, loud keyboard, three-button mouse. He half expected it to be hooked up to a dot matrix printer. "He's a friend of yours?"

"Used to be. He's behind all this, somehow." But Chuck couldn't have done anything this big. A tremor ran through Gary's hand, and he clenched it into a fist. "Maybe he put something in my food. Can you run a blood test?"

The officer put on a tight, tense smile that meant she didn't believe a word he was saying. "Let me check one more thing, sir." She tapped a few keys, then frowned at the screen of her computer. "It's Gary Hobson, right?" 

"I've been here for how long, and you can't get that much straight?"

"There's no need to be rude. May I see your driver's license again?"

"What for?"

"I need to verify your I.D." She took the license from him and flashed another fake smile as she stood. "I'll be right back." She walked across the bullpen and into one of the offices that encircled it. 

Gary jiggled his foot impatiently, trying to ignore the corner-of-the-eye gazes he was getting from the other cops, the only people he'd run into in the past twenty-four hours who seemed to know who he was. There wasn't much humor left in them now. Next thing he knew, they'd put him in a white coat and haul him away forever. 

A rumble so low he felt rather than heard it shook Gary's chair. A pencil rolled off the desk. "Did you feel that?" Gary asked the cop at the next desk.

"Feel what?" the cop asked without looking up from his keyboard.

The guy in handcuffs who sat next to him leaned toward Gary. "Another alien landing," he confided with a knowing nod. "They use Soldier Field during the summer when the Bears aren't playing."

Gary pinched the bridge of his nose. Which was worse: believing in little green men, or believing his whole life could vanish without a trace?

When the officer came back, her frown was etched into her forehead, maybe permanently. Gary glanced over at the office she'd come from. A guy in a rumpled suit leaned against the door frame, arms crossed as he watched Gary intently. Officer Lansky didn't sit down. "Mr. Hobson? First, I need to tell you that we have no record of a BMW being registered in your name."

"Would I report a stolen car if I didn't own it?"

"You might, if you wanted to run some kind of scam. But you'd have to assume that both the CPD and your insurance company are stupid, and I know you don't think that." He was about to protest that he wasn't the criminal in all this, but something about the way she was speaking to him, carefully, but with a hint of kindness, turned Gary's annoyance into confusion. She held out his driver's license. "This is also a problem. It looks authentic, and that's your photo, but the DMV has a different ID number for Gary Hobson. Different address, too." With a glance over at the guy in plainclothes, she slid into her chair. "Is it forged?"

"Of course not! I had to take an entire personal day to get that renewed last year." He'd nearly lost an important client because he hadn't been there to take the call when four major stocks in said client's portfolio all tanked at once. 

"Well, then..." Her speech slowed to a crawl, as though she was leaving room for him to explain. As if he could. "Maybe your information got mixed up with someone else's. Let's check with your insurance company."

She was stalling him until the guys in the white coats came to take him to the funny farm. Gary stood. "Look, I came in here of my own accord, and I think I'd better leave while I still can."

"No, wait," she said, but the man who'd been watching them had already crossed the bullpen, blocking the path to the exit. 

He held out a hand to Gary. "Mr. Hobson, I'm Detective Ramirez. We're glad you came in. May I ask you a few more questions?"

"You know, I think I'm done here," Gary said. "I'm not a criminal. You can't lock me up."

"Actually, if that license is forged—" Officer Lansky started, but Ramirez shook his head, and she snapped her mouth shut.

"And I'm not going to some psych ward, because I'm not crazy, no matter what you all think, so if you let me go, we can all forget this happened."

"Mr. Hobson, I can assure you we don't want to put you in a jail cell or a psych ward. In fact, we want to get you home, so if you'll come with me for a few moments, we'll see if we can straighten this out." He gestured to his office. "Lansky, you'll let me know when my friend arrives?" She nodded.

Detective Ramirez led Gary to his office, where he took him through the same series of questions Officer Lansky had, plus a bunch more about how long he'd worked at Strauss, what he did there, and when he'd married Marcia. Just as Gary had convinced himself that they were, in fact, stalling him until the loony bin bus could come pick him up, Officer Lansky escorted an older man into the office. Ramirez told Gary to wait, drew the guy out to the bullpen, and carried out a hushed conversation. The visitor, portly with hair the color of a February sky, didn't take his eyes off Gary even once. When Ramirez stopped talking, they both came back into the office. Gary stood.

"Nice of you to show up, Hobson," the old guy said. He scanned Gary's license, which Ramirez handed him, with a disgusted turn to his mouth. "You all right? Where the hell have you been?"

"I got a little lost, I guess. Who—"

"Damn good thing you got unlost. Marissa's worried sick."

"You mean Marcia." Gary looked to Ramirez, who seemed more than a little bemused. "I've been telling you people all morning, I need to find my wife, Marcia Hobson."

"See what I mean?" Ramirez asked the man. "He says he's your guy, and the description is dead on, but nothing he's telling us matches what you put out in the alert. You sure it's him?"

"Yeah," the man said. But his eyes narrowed.

"I'm not his guy!" Gary protested. "I've never seen him before!"

Ramirez rubbed his chin. "You don't know Detective Crumb?"

"Ex-detective," the guy said.

"What the hell kind of name is Crumb?"

The old man's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Have you finally taken too many knocks to the brain? 'Cause you're hitting a whole new level of bizarro here."

Gary turned to Ramirez. "What does he want?"

"He's here to take care of you," Ramirez said, in the same careful tone people used with kids on the short bus. "He's been looking for you since last night."

"I don't know him!" Gary snapped, fully aware that he did sound like a child. But he had a right to be upset. He turned to Crumb, who finally looked as confused as Gary felt. "Where are you taking me?"

"I'm going to take you home," he said, looking Gary up and down, "but maybe we should make a stop at the doc's first."

"I don't need a doctor." Gary latched on to the one thing he'd wanted to hear. "Home is fine, home is great."

Crumb blew out a breath. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. "That's the first reasonable thing I've heard you say."

"My wife will be there, right?"

"Your wife?"

"Marcia Roberts Hobson. We've been married seven years."

Crumb scowled at him for a moment, then flipped the phone shut. "That'll be news to her."

"Crumb?" Ramirez said. "I know you know the guy better than I do, but I really think it would be a good idea to get him checked out."

"Yeah, no kidding," Crumb muttered. He motioned to the door. "C'mon, Hobson, let's go."

Gary didn't trust the guy. But he'd promised the only thing that mattered at this point. "You'll take me home?" 

"That's why they called me."

The cops had stalled him for Crumb, Gary realized. "Are you a private detective?" Marcia sometimes hired them to get information on her cases. When Gary hadn't come home the night before, she might have called one of them to help, especially if the cops she'd talked to were as slow on the uptake as these people seemed to be. "My wife asked you to find me, didn't she?"

"Something like that. C'mon, kid, let's go."

"Home," Gary said, "to Marcia."

Crumb made a face and pointed toward the exit across the bullpen. "Let's start by getting out of here."

Gary didn't need to be told twice. He crossed the bullpen in long strides, leaving the old guy to follow in his wake.

* * * * *


	8. Chapter 8

_And you may ask yourself_  
 _Well, how did I get here?_  
_~Brian Eno_

 

* * *

Gary's unease deepened as Officer Yamada drove him to Lincoln Park. It was more than being lightheaded from hunger and the morning's attack. In the first place, he knew he wasn't really going home, and in the second place, he could tell from the constant squawkings over the police radio that things were going wrong all over the city.

"All units, robbery in progress...All units, attempted assault reported...Units in the vicinity of Jackson and Racine, we have an overturned delivery truck, need assistance directing traffic."

Gary winced at each of the calls. Someone should be out stopping them. _He_ should be out stopping them, instead of being driven to his ex-wife's house by a glorified babysitter. But he didn't have tomorrow's paper, so how would he know where to go?

It was only when Officer Yamada rang the brownstone's doorbell that Gary realized he'd have to come up with some way to explain this to Marcia. He couldn't imagine why she'd been looking for him, but at least she seemed to know who he was, which put her in a club of one.

The door swung open, and she was there, wide-eyed with hope. "Gary? Where have you been? I was so worried!" She threw her arms around him, knocking his breath out with the familiarity of her body against his.

"Marcia." He didn't know what else to say. Marcia solved that problem by kissing him, a light, lingering kiss like the ones they'd exchanged for years while they were dating. But not exactly: she was using a different toothpaste or brand of lipstick or something. His confusion must have come through, because she pulled back with a little frown.

"Are you all right?" She leaned around him and asked the cop, "Is he all right?"

"Safe and sound, ma'am. Physically at least." He touched the brim of his hat. "Have a good reunion."

"Don't stand out here, come in the house." Marcia led Gary to the entryway. A polished oak staircase rose to the second floor; archways on either side led to a living room and a kitchen. Marcia drew him into the latter, then faced him, hands planted on her hips. "Where were you last night? Why didn't you call?"

She acted so little like the Marcia who'd divorced him, and so much like the Marcia he'd thought he'd known way back when, that all he could think of to say was, "Your hair's really grown out." The last time he'd seen her, she'd sported a formidable short cut that emphasized the sharp angles of her face. Now it reached her shoulders and curled just enough to make him want to play with it.

She snorted out a hard-edged courtroom laugh. "Not in the past day." She touched his arm, and he stared down at her hand. "God, Gary, you look like hell. When you didn't come home, I thought you were working late, but then Phil called looking for you." 

The back of Gary's neck prickled. The last time he'd heard Marcia call Pritchard "Phil," she'd been about to marry him. Hadn't she? He searched her eyes, but found no trace of hesitation or subterfuge.

"Gary?"

"I got a little lost. It's kind of a long story." He had to look away from her, and his gaze took in the sunny kitchen, the soft green walls and sparkling granite counters, the oak cabinets. All of it expensive, and none of it his. "I don't think I'm the guy you think I am."

"You're a little early for a midlife crisis." She glanced down at her watch, the silver Movado her parents had given her when she'd finished law school. At least he remembered that much. "I have a court date this afternoon, but there's still plenty of time. Let's have some coffee and we'll talk."

She went over to the counter and started in on the coffee, grinding beans, pouring water, flipping switches on a coffee maker more complex than McGinty's espresso machine.

But McGinty's was gone.

"So what's going on?" Marcia asked.

Gary didn't know where to stand, or how to begin explaining. He pulled out a chair, but didn't sit down. What was he supposed to say? _When I woke up yesterday, I didn't live here. You'd tossed me out two years ago. I'd built a new life as a bar owner with a clairvoyant newspaper, and now it's all gone._ That would go over real well.

Her eyes narrowed. "What did you do, go to poker night at Chuck's?"

"I wasn't with Chuck." At least he could tell her the truth about that. Chuck didn't even live in Chicago anymore. If he did, though, a particularly rowdy poker night would explain a lot. Some of Chuck's other friends had been known to sneak pot into brownies, cookies, and even guacamole for shits and giggles. Was this all an illusion, or was it the life with a newspaper that told the future that he'd dreamed up? Was he really losing his mind?

Marcia flipped one last switch. The coffee maker lit up and blurbled, and she moved to stand close to him. Her hand joined his on the chair back. "Be honest with me, Gary. No matter what, I promise I won't be angry. I hated not knowing where you'd gone. I know we had that fight last week, but I love you. You know that, right?"

This was real. He was standing in a beautiful house looking at his beautiful wife, the wife he'd spent the better part of a year trying to get over. She wasn't picking a fight, not even over him disappearing for twenty-four hours. "I—I love you, too?"

"You're not sure?"

"I don't remember exactly what happened." He didn't remember any of this, but should he tell her that? "It's all kind of fuzzy, and I'm not sure I trust my memories." He knew she'd think he meant his memory of last night, but most of that was seared on his synapses. What he didn't trust was everything before last night. "I'm not sure what happened."

"Well, for starters, you apparently picked up a whole new wardrobe. Or an old one." Her tone was light, but her face was still worried.

"Huh?"

"That shirt looks like something my dad would wear. Make that your dad. I thought we gave all the plaid to the Goodwill." She shook her head in that way she'd always had, dislodging the sarcasm that was her natural response to anything she didn't understand. Her frown deepened as she traced the cut on his jaw. "How did this happen?"

"I was robbed," he said, and told her about what had happened on the park bench. That much, he was sure, was real. He could feel the bruises throbbing, and he sure as hell didn't have his wallet.

"Why didn't you say that in the first place? Oh God, Gary, that's _horrible_. What were you thinking, sleeping in the park?" She took his left hand and held it up so they both could see. "Did they take your ring, too?" The hurt, the betrayal, in her eyes was so real. How could this be the Marcia who'd thrown him out on their anniversary?

"They must have. I don't remember everything." Or he didn't remember it correctly, maybe that was it. "Even before I was robbed, I didn't remember where to go." 

"It's okay." She rubbed the spot where the ring would have been with her thumb. For months after the divorce, it had been a smooth, pale circlet, a negative image reminding him of what he'd lost. Now the skin was the same shade as the rest of his finger. If Marcia noticed, she didn't say so. "We can claim the ring on our homeowners' insurance. I'm just glad you—oh, Gary." She threw her arms around him. He winced at the pressure on his stiff ribs and bruised torso. "I'm sorry, babe. I know you've had a rough time. I didn't get any sleep at all last night, worrying about you, going to the police—" She broke off, blinked red-rimmed eyes up at him, and brushed his hair off his forehead. "And we have to get you to a doctor. I don't know who. A neurologist? A psychiatrist?"

"I don't need to see a doctor." At least, he didn't think he did. Wasn't the first sign of being crazy thinking that you weren't? But he was entertaining the possibility that he was crazy, so that meant he probably wasn't, except of course he wouldn't know if he was going crazy. "Or—I don't know. Maybe I do need help," he admitted. 

She put her palm on his cheek. It had been so long since she, or anyone at all, had touched him like that, and he couldn't help leaning into her warmth. "Let's see what we can do."

With that, she changed from tender, concerned Marcia into what-can-we-do-to-fix-this, force-of-nature Marcia. She brought him coffee and an oat muffin, asked him for a few details about the robbery, cancelled his credit cards and called the insurance company, then attacked the medical listings in the phone book. Gary let her go to it. He didn't think whatever was wrong with him could be fixed, at least not like this, but Marcia had always enjoyed taking charge of a situation. Most of the time he'd enjoyed letting her do it. Maybe that was what he should do now. Just go with the flow.

Marcia hung up the phone and joined him at the table. "As long as you're not showing any other symptoms of a concussion, they all say it's okay to let you go on for a day or so, until they can see you. Maybe whatever it was that's happened to you will wear off." Her smile was uncertain. "You've been working a lot lately. Maybe the stress is getting to you. How are you feeling?"

"Physically, I feel okay." It wasn't exactly the truth, but it was close. "A few bruises, nothing time won't cure. But I do have a monster headache."

"How about an aspirin?"

"That'd be great."

She disappeared into some other room, and he heard her head up the stairs. He sank down on the chair, assailed by memories of Marissa stocking the bar, the office, and his loft with aspirin, ibuprofen, ice bags, and funky-smelling ointments for bruises and pulled muscles. Thanks to the various injuries he'd had over two years working with the paper, there were caches of first aid supplies all over McGinty's.

Which didn't exist. But it had, once. Hadn't it?

Marcia came back with a tiny bottle of aspirin and poured him a glass of water, then rested her hand lightly on his shoulder while he downed it. "As long as you're in one piece—" She glanced at her watch again. "I really can't miss this court date. We've already rescheduled twice."

He started to ask her about making partner, but he wasn't sure if anything from his paper still held true. Instead, he managed to smile up at her. "I don't think you should miss it." She was the most confusing piece of this whole puzzle so far, especially when she touched him, and he wasn't sure he should be dealing with her in large doses. 

She brightened just a little. It made his heart jump in a way it hadn't for well over two years. "You're supposed to be in that meeting with Phil and the investors. Do you feel up to it, or do you want to stay here and rest up?"

"Phil Pritchard? At Strauss?" This time, his heart gave more of a thud.

"Of course Phil Pritchard." She frowned, but shook it away with a toss of her too-long hair. "Maybe it would help you to get back to a normal routine. Just be sure to keep clear of Chuck," she said with a teasing wink. 

"Chuck works at Strauss? I work at Strauss? I mean, I do work at Strauss, of course I do," he covered when she gave him a look that meant she was about to ship him off to a psych ward, appointment or no appointment.

"Gary?"

"You're right. That's probably what I need. Resume my normal life and it'll all come back to me." He swallowed the rest of the water, trying to banish the metallic taste in his mouth. Phil Pritchard was the last person Gary wanted to see right now, and pretty much the only person Gary hoped wouldn't remember him. But if Chuck was still working at Strauss and Associates, he would be there instead of California. If anyone could help him figure this out, it was Chuck. "I'll give it a shot."

Marcia's face was a picture of genuine relief, distilled into a grin that made her look five years younger. "Is your car still in the garage downtown?"

"It must be, yeah."

"Okay, I'll give you a ride. You can bring your car back tonight."

"Uh, yeah, that'd be great." Now that he knew he'd be able to talk to Chuck, he was anxious to get going. He started for the back door, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him back. 

"You are not wearing that." Her grin turned teasing. "And you need to shave, hon, or no one will recognize you."

"I thought you were in a hurry."

She rolled her eyes. "I have time for you to lose the plaid."

* * * * *

The old guy with the weird name drove a boat of a Chrysler. They got in, but he didn't start it, just sat there looking at Gary like he was waiting for something.

"What?" Gary finally asked.

"I'm trying to figure out what the hell you're up to. All that crap you fed Ramirez about a stolen car and identity theft, was that some kind of cover story?"

"No."

"Because even though I kinda understand that what you do might require some—" He waved his hands as though conjuring rabbits from his dashboard. "—subtrefugical forces, filing false reports with the CPD is not a good idea. I thought you'd know better than that."

"I didn't make a false report! I have no idea what's going on, but I'm not lying about it."

Without breaking his stare, Crumb pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket again, opened it, and again, didn't dial. "We thought you might be dead, you know. Spent all night calling morgues and hospitals and everyone we could think of trying to find you."

"Well, now you found me." Gary spread his arms wide, then slumped back in the seat. "But I still have no idea who you are or why you care."

"Why I care? How 'bout I have saved your ass from bombs, mobsters, assassins, and sinking ships more times than I can count, and I don't want to let it go to waste?"

Great. He was trapped in a car with a crazy man, and the cops had orchestrated it all. "Will you just take me home?" If he could see Marcia, everything would be all right.

Crumb let out a long, long sigh, then closed the phone and turned the key in the Chrysler's ignition. The engine roared to life. "You're not at least going to tell me where you were last night?"

"The Marriott."

"Oh yeah?" His eyes lit up, then narrowed as he pulled out into traffic. "Look, Hobson, if you want to run around with a lady, it's not my business, but the least you could do is tell your friends you're not coming home. Save them some worry."

The way this guy kept calling him by his last name was by no means the weirdest thing that had happened lately, but it did amplify the strangeness. Not even Phil called him Hobson anymore. " I wouldn't cheat on my wife, Detective Crumb." It was more than just the oddness of the guy's name bothering him. There was something familiar about it. "I was alone."

Crumb spared him a look, then turned his attention back to the road. "If you don't want to tell me the truth, that's fine, I'm used to that. I'm just trying to give you an out so you don't have to pay for a head shrinker. But unless I hear something from you that makes sense right now, we're gonna get that skull of yours checked out."

Gary was beginning to wonder if that wasn't the best idea he'd heard in at least a day. "I told your cop friends everything I know." Crumb fell silent as he steered them through River North, and Gary stole a look at him. He hadn't met the guy before, but he'd seen his picture somewhere. Maybe on the news. "You were a cop?"

"Glad to see you remember that much."

Detective Crumb. _Crumbs of Crumb_ , he remembered Chuck saying. A terrible joke about a cop who'd been killed by a serial bomber. "Wasn't there a bomb in a teddy bear?"

Crumb shot a look his way. "Couple Christmases ago, yeah. Coming back to you?"

"Didn't you die?"

As questions went, it was beyond stupid. Of course he hadn't died; he was sitting right there. But Crumb didn't snort or laugh. At the next red light, he gave Gary a long, inscrutable summing up, looked like he was about to ask another question, then shook his head. "No, Hobson. I did not die."

Chicago might be the most crime-ridden city in America, but even so, a cop blowing up was something that Gary wouldn't forget. The barely suppressed panic he'd been battling all day twisted around his spine. A ghost was driving him home. "It was a long time ago," he finally said. "I must be remembering it wrong."

Another red light; another hard stare. "You got a newspaper with you?"

Gary held out his empty hands. "Who carries a paper around nowadays?"

"That's what I've been wondering for the past two years." Crumb nodded at Gary's left hand. "That a wedding ring?"

"'Course it is." He rubbed the band reflexively; it was proof of Marcia, proof that he was who he thought he was.

The light changed to green. Crumb turned his eyes back to the road and raised his voice over the honking horns. "You get hitched last night?" 

"I've been married for seven years. And I'd like to see my wife now. You can take me to the courthouse. She has a hearing today."

Crumb snorted. "I take you to the courthouse and they will lock you up and force feed me the key."

"I just want to see Marcia."

"Right." Crumb slowed at an intersection and flipped on the left turn signal. "The doc it is."

* * * * *

The master bedroom suite took up the entire third floor of the house, and came complete with a pair of walk-in closets and a bathroom that was more than half the size of Gary's loft at McGinty's. The closet that was supposed to be his offered mostly ties and suits. He tried on a dark grey jacket and found a business card in the pocket: "Gary M. Hobson, Junior Partner, Strauss and Associates."

A well-paying, prestigious job. An amazing house. Marcia. It was the life he'd thought he wanted, what seemed like a lifetime ago. But really, it had only been two years.

Maybe he didn't own a bar or a cat. Maybe it was time to acknowledge that everyone to whom he'd spoken in the past twenty-four hours was right, and he had somehow wiped the last two years out of his memory and replaced them with an insane fantasy about being a third-tier superhero with a newspaper that told the future.

But that newspaper was still in his back pocket. He smoothed it out on the maroon silk comforter and read about a sunny evening that hadn't happened and a couple of traces of the stories he'd fixed the morning before: a lost girl returned to her parents in the Borders bookstore near Water Tower, a purse snatching averted by a stranger at the L stop at State and Lake. Nothing about the woman's threat to sue.

He ducked into the bathroom and took a quick shower, wondering if the triple jets would wash away who he thought he'd been and fit him into the shape of the person Marcia thought he was. 

When he shaved afterward, using the toiletries on the expansive, two-sink vanity, he ended up smelling more like Chuck before a date than he did like Gary Hobson. He turned over the bottle of aftershave. The tiny, tasteful price tag was still there. The stuff cost more than the daily salary of a cook at McGinty's. How could he know that if his staff weren't real?

The clothes he'd found in the closet didn't quite fit. Even though they had a label from a tailor's shop, the pants hung loosely from the belt, and the jacket and shirt sagged off his shoulders. The tie, on the other hand, felt like a choker. He'd never much liked them. None of this was his. Nothing but the paper and his worse-for-the-wear jeans and plaid shirt. He found an empty briefcase stashed on a shelf in the closet and put the paper and his clothes inside so he could keep them with him. 

When he went downstairs, Marcia was rattling her car keys in the kitchen, but she turned a bright smile on him. "Much better. You look more like you, though maybe..." She tilted her head, looking him up and down. "Have you been working out? You've lost weight. I should have noticed." She flashed him a rueful smile. "I guess there's more than that I should have noticed, if you're running away from me."

He couldn't meet her eyes when he said, "I came back, didn't I?"

"Are you really okay with this? If I pull a few strings, I'm sure I can get you in to see a doctor somewhere."

"You mean a psychologist, because I'm losing my mind?" Gary tried to smile, but couldn't manage it. He was starting to wonder if that was exactly what was happening. On the other hand, if Chuck really was at Strauss, it would be worth talking to him about all this before he did anything drastic. "Let me try work first. See how it goes." 

"If you're sure. I could cancel court, but it's such a pain to reschedule."

"It's okay, Marcia. Just take me to the office, and we'll talk more tonight."

She nodded. "I think that would be a good idea. Meantime, since your wallet was stolen, you should take this to get you through." She handed him a hundred dollars cash and a set of car keys with a BMW logo on the fob. "I know you don't have your license, but you never get stopped, and if you do, I'll get you out of it. You shouldn't leave your car downtown another night, not after what we paid for it."

"Sure," Gary said. "I'll drive the Beemer home."

She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "That's my guy." 

Part of him wanted to turn and capture her lips with his own. Was it because he loved her, or because she treated him as if he belonged here? As if she loved him. So right. So wrong. So completely baffling. "Let's go."

* * * * *

Marissa wiped a glass clean, set it down, picked it up, and wiped it again. Crumb had called earlier, a hint of cautious optimism in his voice, to say he was tracking down a lead. But only a lead, not Gary. If he'd been sure he was going to find Gary, he surely would have brought her along.

That had been hours ago, and there hadn't been a peep since, not from Crumb, and certainly not from Gary. So she was stuck at McGinty's, jumping every time the phone rang, freezing every time the door opened. Just in case.

It was a good thing the rest of the staff knew what they were doing, because she couldn't focus on lunch prep to save her soul. She stood behind the bar, answered questions when they came her way, and wiped glasses. Or maybe one glass. She kept losing track. 

Sarah had guessed right away that something was wrong. When she'd asked what was going on, Marissa had answered with an honest but incomplete, "I don't know. Gary's gone AWOL." Sarah had backed off after a quick expression of sympathy. She must have said something to A.J., because they'd created a bubble around Marissa to let her deal with things her own way, jumping in to answer questions from the other staff and making sure no one but Marissa answered the phone. She was grateful, but afraid that if she said so, the bubble would burst. After a sleepless night, all she had energy for was waiting.

She really hated waiting.

She made A.J. put the local news on the television, and everyone around her tsked about a train derailment just outside the Loop in which several people had been badly hurt. 

"Is Gary down there?" A.J. asked. She could hear beer coming out of the tap while he waited for her answer. 

"What?"

"By the train?"

"I don't think so." Marissa rubbed the cloth against the glass until it squeaked. If Gary had been there, the train wouldn't have derailed. At the very least, no one would have been hurt. Unless people were originally going to die, and he'd stopped that much. Or unless he'd been hurt himself. No matter what, whether he'd been there or not, he was going to blame himself for those injuries.

"It sounded like someplace he might be. If there's anything we can do, you know we'll do it, right?" A.J. said. "All of us."

She nodded, biting her lip again to keep the bubble from bursting. "Thanks."

When the phone finally rang, she lunged for it, dropping the glass on the rubber mat. Then she froze, her hand hovering over the receiver. What if it was bad news? What if it wasn't Crumb at all? What if—

What if the machine picked up before she did, she thought wryly, and answered.

"Marissa," Crumb said. "I got him."

Her knees wobbled. She took a step back. "What happened? Is he all right? Where are you? Is he hurt?"

"Whoa, slow down. He's in one piece."

"Let me talk to him."

There was another tiny pause, then, "I'll bring him home, okay? It'll be a little while, but we'll be there as soon as we can."

"What is it you're not telling me? Where are you? Was it the train?"

"Train? No, no, we're at the doctor's office."

"You said he wasn't hurt!" At her outburst, Marissa could feel the atmosphere in the bar shift, the chatter quiet. A.J. and the others had heard, of course they'd heard. She was past caring.

"He's not hurt, not that I can tell," Crumb said. "But he's acting kinda weird. Well, weirder than normal. I'm getting him checked out."

"You're scaring me. Why can't I talk to him? I'll come to you, just tell me where."

"He's in with the doctor. It's a precautionary thing. He seems confused about what happened last night. But the important thing is, he's alive and in one piece. You can relax, okay?"

She was only a little less worried than before, but it left room for anger. Crumb, of all people, should know better than to shut her out. "I know him better than anyone. I need to be there."

"Look, kiddo, I know I should have called sooner, but he wasn't acting like himself, and I thought—" He sighed. "I didn't know what to think. I don't know what's going on with him, but I'm going to get him home."

"When?"

"Maybe an hour or so. Soon as I can, promise."

She felt the edges of worry and anger soften. Gary wasn't hurt. That was all that mattered. That, and Crumb jumping in to help like this. "Thanks," she whispered.

"Any time, you know that."

She hung up and moved out from behind the bar; found a stool, cradled her head in her hands, and took long, slow breaths that released some of the tension that had held her upright for nearly twenty-four hours. Still, she couldn't have called what she felt relief. Something was still wrong, she was sure of it.

But Gary was alive. Crumb would bring him home.

"You all right, Marissa?" Sarah asked, inches from her elbow and low enough for a semblance of privacy. Marissa nodded. "You want some lunch? Tony made too many chef salads for table four."

Tony never made too much of anything. It was one of the few reasons they were still on their feet financially. But Marissa nodded without comment. Sarah was only gone for a moment; she came back and put some silverware and the salad in front of Marissa, deliberately clinking the fork on the bar so Marissa could find it. "Crumb found Gary," Marissa told her. "They'll be back in a little while."

Sarah let out a little squeak. "Oh, that's great. Really, I mean it, we were all so worried!" She gave Marissa a quick hug around the shoulders. "I'll get you some iced tea."

Marissa couldn't hear everything that was said as the news passed to the wait staff and into the kitchen, but the comfortable lunch buzz grew louder and took on a celebratory edge. The reaction represented one thing she'd never talked to Gary about after any of the times he'd gone missing, but should have—the way this place needed him, and not just to do the work of running it. His familiarity with the staff and the regulars, his ability to shoot the bull with them and make sure that anyone who had a little too much to drink was taken care of and sent home safely. All those things made McGinty's more than a bar. He grounded the place as much as it grounded him, and his affection for it was a big part of its appeal and energy. She should have told him that the day before, should have pointed out the reasons his presence and attention were good for this place instead of picking at the negatives and accusing him of neglect. Then again, he'd been so cranky and out of sorts with both her and the universe in general it had been hard to remember anything positive at all. Thank God he was okay; they could work it out now, the way they always did.

As large as the salad was, she'd demolished about half of it when a different wave of long-missing energy burst through the door. 

"Here I come to save the day!" 

The bar fell silent at the off-key song. Marissa swallowed too fast, and a crouton lodged in her throat. "Hey, I didn't mean it literally." Someone— _Chuck_ —pounded on her back until the crouton came free, and then for a little bit after, which made it twice as hard to catch her breath. "Well, I did, but it wasn't you I was planning to save."

Gripping the bar rail with both hands, Marissa coughed, at this point trying to dislodge the scratchy memory rather than the crouton itself from her throat. "Ch—Chuck? What are you doing here?"

"Gar's in trouble, right?" He slid onto the stool next to hers. "What'd you think I was going to do, eat sushi on the beach?"

* * * * *


	9. Chapter 9

_I'm made of atoms, you're made of atoms_  
 _And we're all in this together_  
 _And long division just doesn't matter_  
 _Ask a scientist, it's quantum physics_  
 _'Cause we're all in this together_  
_~Ben Kweller_

 

* * *

"Stop it, Gary." Marcia reached over and pulled his hand away from the tie he'd been loosening again. There was a single, straight crease between her perfectly plucked eyebrows. "Do you want me to go in with you?"

Gary looked out the car window at the imposing glass facade of Strauss and Associates. "No, I got this." Then, because she flashed him a half hopeful, half wry twist of a smile, he brushed a kiss on her cheek. "See you tonight."

She squeezed his arm. "You'd better, mister." 

He wasn't sure where to go once he was in the building. He only remembered being a cubicle monkey, and he was pretty sure junior partners had their own offices. But thanks to the paper he knew, or thought he knew, how to fake his way through just about anything. He squared his shoulders and gave a tense nod to the security guard in the foyer, went up the steps, and pushed open the doors to the main reception area.

Where Marissa sat, running her fingers over a Braille printout. Why hadn't he considered the possibility that if Chuck was still there, she would be, too? 

"Hey—you—you're here!" He would have dropped the briefcase and vaulted the desk to give her a hug, but she stiffened and frowned. 

"Mr. Hobson?"

He planted his hands on the reception desk, leaning over it. "Thank God, Marissa. I thought I was losing my mind. You have no idea."

Her chair rolled back another couple of inches. "Is something wrong, Mr. Hobson?"

"Gary. My name is Gary."

"That's very kind." She paused, her puzzled frown deepening. "That's right. Your first name is Gary."

"You know that." She had to know that. She had to know him.

"Was that you calling me and trying to get into my building last night?"

"Of course it was me. I need to talk to you. Everything's gone nuts, and I can't find Cat or the paper. Ever since I left McGinty's yesterday, it's like my whole life's disappeared." His voice cracked on the last word. Over in the secretarial pool, heads turned to stare at him.

Marissa lurched to her feet and backed right into the wall. "Mr. Hobson, are you feeling all right? I can call a doctor if you need one."

That same stomach-sinking fear he'd felt the night before took over. "Don't call me that. I'm Gary. You have to remember. Please, tell me what the hell is going on."

She took a deep breath. "Mr. Pritchard has been asking where you are all morning. He's worried about a conference call with some investors this afternoon. Maybe you should go see him."

"I don't care about him. Look, Marissa, I know we were kind of ticked at each other yesterday." Yesterday. When his life had been completely different. Now she didn't look ticked. She looked scared. Of him. Not that he couldn't sympathize, but this was Marissa, damn it. "Could we just go somewhere and talk?"

"You want to talk to me?"

"Yes! There's a deli—" No, the deli wasn't there. "There's a coffee shop down the street. I know you like a good mocha."

Something must have gotten through to her; she stepped away from the wall. "I wish I could help you, Mr. Hobson."

"Gary."

"Okay. Gary." She held her shoulders too close to her ears. "Junior partners can disappear for the afternoon, but the rest of us can't."

He pulled away from the desk, pitched his voice lower. "How about after work? Just a cup of coffee somewhere, or I'll buy you dinner. I'm not trying to scare you. I just need someone to talk to, Marissa. Please."

"Why me?"

Because you're my best friend, he wanted to say, but he wasn't sure she knew that. "Because you've always seemed like the sanest person here. Because I need to make sense of the past twenty-four hours, and you're the only one I know who always makes sense."

Finally, hesitantly, she nodded. "Okay, but someplace public. And if you try anything—"

"I would _never_. I promise. I mean, apparently, I'm a married man." He ran a hand through his hair. "Thank you."

"You'd better get to your office before Mr. Pritchard finds you out here talking to the hired help," she said.

"You're a whole lot more than that." Pritchard, of course, had never realized it, but Gary didn't want to get her in trouble. "Which way is my office?"

She pointed down the hall, the opposite direction from the way he'd gone when he worked in the cubicle maze. "Same place it's always been."

"Thank you." A few steps from her desk, he turned around. "Could you send Chuck—Mr. Fishman—to see me?"

She reached for the phone, then stopped. "Did you visit his apartment last night, too?"

"No," Gary tossed over his shoulder. "Couldn't get a bus to Los Angeles."

* * * * *

"The doctor said there's nothing wrong with me," Gary pointed out as Crumb steered the Chrysler through the crowded streets of River North. Why was he dragging his feet about getting Gary home? He didn't seem to be enjoying playing chauffeur. "We could get to my place a lot faster if you take Halstead."

"He said there's nothing physically wrong with you. Too soon to be sure about your mental state, but I've been saying that for years." The insult fell flat; Crumb stared fixedly out the windshield, tapping on the steering wheel.

"Something you're not telling me?" Gary asked. 

"I'm not telling you nothing you don't want to hear."

Gary hadn't even begun to work out that triple negative when Crumb pulled up across the street from a brick building, one of the old firehouses that had been built after the Great Fire and later converted to other uses. One that housed a comfortable sports bar where regulars gathered to shoot pool and spout bull after a long day at work. One that looked like the last relic of the Chicago that had been eroding since Gary's college days.

One that shouldn't have been there.

The street signs said Illinois and Franklin. The L came screeching by overhead. There was a neon sign hanging from the corner of the building where it had always been. All of it was completely impossible. Chuck had to be tied to whatever the hell was going on, no question about it. 

Okay, one question. How? Drugs, holographic projection technology, a real-life theater set? Because this was McGinty's, and therefore couldn't be real. Gary wouldn't have pegged the guy who'd brought him here as someone who could be bought, but Chicago was full of barely-working actors.

"What?" Crumb, or the guy pretending to be Crumb, barked when Gary looked from him to the building and back.

"You said you were taking me home."

Crumb rolled his eyes and pointed to the bar. 

"I haven't been in there since—" He gulped, remembering a wrecking ball. A pile of bricks. "I haven't been there in over a year."

"Right." Crumb got out and slammed the car door; when Gary got out, too, the old man glared at him over the car's enormous hood. "Humor me, would you? And Hobson," he added as they headed across the street, "whether you know it or remember it or not, you've got friends here, and one of them's spent the past twenty-four hours worried sick about you, so would you at least try to pretend that you're glad to be home?"

He had friends, but not here. Not for a long time. Gary made no promises, just followed Crumb into the bar. It wasn't exactly the same as he remembered. The bars had been moved, the floors re-laid, and the chairs and tables were newer versions, without scuffs and scratches. But he recognized a couple faces he remembered from the days when he'd been a regular. Back when this place had actually existed. If it was a fake, it was a hell of a good one. "I've been drugged, right?" he asked Crumb. "Some kind of hallucinogenic, lucid dream-inducing drug?"

"You're not on drugs, Hobson. I had the doctor check." Crumb gave him a push. "Get in there."

The staff, none of whom he'd ever seen before, greeted him with waves and back thumps. It was half, "Hi, Gary," half, "Hey, Mr. Hobson," and more than one, "Welcome back."

Bemused, Gary followed Crumb to an office set off by a wood and glass door. He'd never been in this part of the building, not even when he'd spent at least one night a week at McGinty's.

"Marissa?" Crumb called around a half-height divider. "We're back."

"Gary!" He had just enough time to realize that Crumb hadn't mispronounced Marcia's name, that he was, in fact, talking about the blind receptionist at Strauss, before she found him, guided by a touch from Crumb on her shoulder, and threw her arms around him.

"Where have you been? You aren't hurt, are you? I know you must be upset about the train accident, but I'm sure you did your best." 

Gary went stiff with surprise and hurt that she wasn't Marcia, and the receptionist pulled back with a directionless frown. Instead of her usual bland-but-crisp blouse and slacks, she was wearing a bright red sundress. "Train accident?" he asked. He looked over her shoulder at the detective, who shrugged.

"It wasn't your fault."

"Why the hell would it be?" And who was she to accuse him and forgive him, almost in the same breath?

"Gary?" She reached out a tentative hand. Her fingers brushed his face, and it was more than he could take. He pushed her hand away. She stumbled back against the desk.

"Hey!" Crumb snapped. In the far corner, a large German shepherd jumped to its feet, growling.

"What kind of game are you people playing?" Gary demanded, raising his voice over the sound of footsteps clattering down a staircase at the other end of the office. 

"Gary, we're not—" the receptionist stuttered, but she was cut off by an exuberant call.

"Yo, Gar!"

"You," Gary growled when the object of all his frustration appeared at the bottom of a nearly-hidden stairway. 

"Fishman?" Crumb asked.

Chuck strolled into the office, grinning as if this was just another college prank. As if pulling Gary's life out from under him was the equivalent of a canned door or short-sheeted bed. Gary pushed past the others to get to him. 

"All the way from sunny C-A," Chuck said. "What's shakin'?"

"You son of a bitch." Gary hauled off with a hard right to Chuck's jaw. It connected with a satisfying smack, and Gary had the pleasure of seeing Chuck stumble back, hand to his face, before the impact registered in his own fingers. "Ow, damn it!"

"Gar, what the hell!" Chuck's exclamation was muffled by the palm he'd pressed to his jaw.

"Hobson!"

"What's going on?" asked the receptionist. 

"You did this to me," Gary told Chuck, ignoring the others. He stabbed a finger at his chest. "I don't know how, and I sure as hell don't know why, but you've had your fun, and now it's over, damn it." He had Chuck backed up to the low sofa. Chuck dropped to the seat and stared up at him, still clutching his jaw.

"What are you talking about?" the receptionist asked.

He whirled on her. "You can drop the act, Miss Clark. I don't know how much he's paying you, or how he talked you into this, but I can't imagine being a part of Chuck's twisted revenge fantasy is worth losing your job."

She was really good; she managed to look as hurt as though he'd hit her instead of Chuck. "My job?"

"If you tell me how he pulled it off, I won't tell Pritchard that our receptionist is a traitor."

"Re _cep_ tionist?"

"But you." Gary turned back to Chuck. "You're finished at Strauss, you got that? I hope this was worth it."

"Hobson, what is wrong with you?" Crumb demanded. He wedged his way between Gary and Chuck. "I told you, these are your friends!"

"He's lost it," Chuck muttered. "Two years of this grind finally broke your brain, huh, Gar?"

"The grind of running a bar?" Crumb asked.

"The only thing wrong with my brain is whatever you did to pull off this crappy prank!"

Chuck blinked at him, trying to play innocent. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you—all of you—stealing my life! Where's Marcia?"

"Not again," Crumb muttered.

His hand still pressed against his jaw, Chuck goggled up at Gary as if he'd grown a second head. "What d'ya want with Marcia?"

Somewhere deep inside Gary the tiny spark of reason whispered that Chuck couldn't have done this, that it was too elaborate for a prank. It had to be a hallucination. "How'd you get the drugs into me? Was it that sandwich yesterday? And where the hell is my wife?"

"I told you, Hobson, there were no drugs." Crumb's face was getting red.

"That's what you said the doctor told you. How do I know you weren't lying to me?"

"Why would I do that?"

"How much is Chuck paying you?"

"I'm not paying anybody," Chuck muttered. "Well, maybe Cindy, but that's it."

"Who the hell is Cindy?" Crumb demanded.

"All right, that's enough." Miss Clark's voice was sharp enough to silence all three of them. "Gary, I don't know what you're talking about, but no one here is trying to fool you or drug you or hurt you. We're your friends. Chuck came all the way from California because we were afraid you were in trouble. You can't just come in here and say things like this. Did you hit Chuck?"

"Yeah, he did," Chuck grumbled.

"Sit down, Gary." She pointed with surprising accuracy to a chair behind the desk opposite hers. "Tell us what you think is going on. And try to do it without yelling or violence."

"Oh, for sweet fu—"

"Do it." Crumb's voice rumbled in his chest like a bulldog's growl. Gary sat down. Chuck stood up.

"Where're you going?" Crumb demanded.

"Ice pack."

"I got it." Crumb pointed at Gary. "Start without me. Please."

Gary folded his arms and glared at the other two. Chuck glared right back, while Miss Clark shifted from one foot to the other.

"What's she talking about, California?" Gary asked.

Chuck glared some more. When Gary raised an eyebrow, he finally said, "It's a long plane ride for an ungrateful so-called best friend."

"I'm not the one who's ungrateful."

"Gary." Miss Clark's voice was still sharp as a chisel. "I know you were frustrated when you left yesterday, but so was I. That doesn't mean I stopped caring about you, and it certainly doesn't mean you can come back and accuse us of trying to hurt you." She lowered her voice and asked, "Does this have anything to do with the paper?"

"What paper?"

"Hoo-boy." Chuck flopped back on the sofa. 

Crumb stalked back in, pulling the door closed behind him. He tossed an ice pack to Chuck, then pulled out an extra chair and tipped back in it, against a set of wooden filing cabinets straight out of the last century. They'd probably come with the building. 

They were all waiting expectantly, and he had no idea what to tell them. He spread his hands wide. "Where do you want me to start?"

"How about telling us what happened when you left yesterday?" Miss Clark said.

"Left here?" 

She nodded.

"That's impossible." He flashed a look at Chuck, who shrugged, no help at all. Gary couldn't tell if he was angry about the old wound—though how could he be, since it seemed to have magically healed?—or the new one. 

But Miss Clark was serious. They were all serious.

He sighed and looked down. There was mail on the desk, addressed to him. There was tax paperwork he'd never seen before with his handwriting, his signature. Crumb watched him hawkishly. Miss Clark eased onto the edge of her chair, hands curled tight in her lap. Chuck blinked at him from behind the ice pack.

Gary cleared his throat and tried again. "The last time I was in this building was a year ago. Right before it was torn down."

* * * * *

The office that belonged to Gary Hobson, Junior Partner, contained a massive chrome and glass desk, a leather sofa and chairs, tall steel and glass bookcases, and a pacing Phil Pritchard.

"Where the hell have you been?" Pritchard exploded in all his nearly-bald, sneering glory. "You tell me to make a major investment in Stinton's high-tech computer, and then you disappear on me, while our investors are going nuts wondering what you want to sink their money into! Seems like something that reprobate Fishman would pull. You're not working with him again, are you?"

Something in Gary wanted to curl up and hide from this guy, or smash his smug face, but he forced it back. If he was a junior partner, he wasn't going to be summarily fired. If he was fired, he hardly cared. He hadn't missed this place once since he'd left. He was here to talk to Chuck and Marissa; he could fake the rest. "No need to worry, Phil." He paused for a fraction of a second, but Pritchard didn't react to Gary using his first name. "The high-tech computer is still in development—"

It clicked. Dr. Stinton. The Gleacher Center. The woman who'd thought he was stealing her investment opportunity. That's where he'd been right before everything had gone all wonky. It was also, he realized, the last time he'd seen Cat. He put on his best placating smile. "You know what, Phil, I got caught up talking to the professor about his machine, and I've been trying to do some background research. Once I finish that up, I'll be glad to talk you through the investment plan. "

To Gary's amazement, Pritchard didn't yell, didn't sneer, didn't try to grind Gary under his heel like he always had before. He tilted his head to one side, then nodded. "I think you'd better. I don't want to lose a good opportunity. This could be the IBM of the new millennium. The next Microsoft. Something like this, you could make a big leap up the career ladder. I know that would make your wife happy." Pritchard glanced at the bookshelf behind Gary's desk, where several photos were displayed. "Woman that beautiful, you ought to do whatever you can to take care of her. I know I would." 

What was that supposed to mean? Apparently what he remembered about Pritchard and Marcia hadn't happened yet, but the way he talked about her was kind of creepy. He was still working on a response when Chuck appeared in the doorway, his face a sullen, suspicious mask. "What do you want?"

A wave of ridiculous hope coursed through Gary. Chuck wasn't supposed to be in Chicago, but that hardly mattered when Gary'd spent the past two days just trying to find someone who knew him. He took a step toward the door, but the unrelenting scowl on Chuck's face and the new one on Pritchard's made him hesitate. 

"What is he doing here?" Pritchard asked.

Gary thought fast, trying to remember business-speak. "He's my primary contact on the Stinton—uh, project. We're going to—to get on board with it, you see, to facilitate the network that will help us think out of the box and—and utilize Chuck's contacts to increase profit margins and insure a substantial return on our investors' commitments."

"What?" Chuck and Pritchard demanded at the same time.

Gary put himself between an open-mouthed Chuck and Pritchard. "I've got it taken care of, Phil," he said, steering his boss toward the door. "That's where I've been all this time. Secret meetings, so we get everything lined up just right before we make our proposal. You know me. I won't let you down."

Chuck snorted, but Pritchard said, "You never have before," and only the momentum of the act he was putting on kept Gary from falling over.

"It's nearly two-thirty," he told Pritchard. "Maybe we should reschedule that conference call with the investors until I complete my background research."

"Does the quantum computer work?"

"It does, but maybe not the way they want it to just yet. That's why I think we should postpone for a day or so."

"Makes sense. I'll have my secretary arrange it."

"Great, and in the meantime Chuck and I will, uh, we'll optimize our informational input."

"Carry on, then," Pritchard said with a nod, and left.

Gary closed the door. "Thank God."

"What was that all about?"

"Chuck, I have to—" He stopped. It'd been months. "You know, it's really good to see you."

"Don't you dare try to butter me up." Chuck folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the desk, glowering. "Especially not after I had to listen to Marcia chew me out last night because you'd ducked out on her."

"She called you?"

"She must have been really desperate." A gleam appeared in Chuck's eye, as if he'd caught the whiff of a scheme he could turn to his own advantage. "You need me to pull your fat out of the fire or something, don't you?"

"Kinda."

"Why the hell should I?"

"Be...cause we're friends?"

"I could have sworn friends didn't betray each other."

That hit a little too close to home; six months ago, he would have sworn Chuck would never leave Chicago, never run out on him and the paper. But the way Gary remembered it, he had. Maybe this was a chance for him to undo whatever he'd done wrong with Chuck, to get it right. He took a deep breath. "Whatever it is, buddy, I'm sorry."

But Chuck kept right on grousing. "And friends don't ignore their friends because their wives have them whipped, and they don't—"

"Chuck!" Gary grabbed him by the shoulders. "I don't know what you're talking about. Something very, very weird is going on, weirder than normal. Will you please listen for a minute?"

"Fine. Beats hanging out in the cubicles, I guess." Chuck shrugged him off and sat in one of the black leather chairs. "Nice office. A little eighties, but in a classy way. Better than I thought you'd ever do."

"That's the point, this isn't my office." Nor was this the Chuck he thought he knew so well. This guy had a satisfied smirk plastered on his face, as if he enjoyed making Gary dangle. As if he wanted to punish him.

"You know, it's not like you've ever invited me in here before." Chuck leaned back, folding his arms and turning his gaze around the room. "I just want to take a moment to soak it all in."

"While I twist in the wind?"

"Something like that, yeah." Chuck bounced up out of the chair and strode over to the bookcases. He picked a small chunk of something, about the size of a Ping-Pong ball off a shelf and held it out to Gary. A frown contorted his forehead. "What's this? Some kind of trophy?"

Anyone else might have thought it was a rock, but Gary knew better. Chunks of the same stuff littered the alley behind the bar. "It's a piece of brick from McGinty's." Which was gone. Just like his friendship with Chuck, apparently. "What do you mean, trophy?"

Chuck blinked at him, then carefully put the brick back down on the shelf and backed away from it. "What is wrong with you, anyway? I mean, not only are you talking to me, you're acting like you don't remember what you did yesterday, let alone a year ago. What'd you do, bonk your head?"

"Not really." He still had a headache that throbbed behind his eyes, but he was getting used to it.

"You go crazy?" Chuck seemed to brighten at the prospect.

"That's entirely possible."

"Can't think of anyone who deserves it more. And since I'm going to be fired if I don't get back to my monkey cage, I'm going to leave you to it."

He started for the door, but Gary grabbed his arm. He needed to talk to Chuck, but he couldn't seem to get through to him in this office. And he didn't want to get him fired, any more than Marissa. That would only push him further away. "Let's have dinner, okay? At five. I'm buying. Please, Chuck, if we were ever friends, would you listen? I think I'm in real trouble."

After a moment, Chuck finally threw up his hands, shaking off Gary's hold. "Fine. Dinner. No promises beyond that." He turned to go, his hand on the doorknob.

Gary asked, "Can you at least tell me what is it I did that's got you so mad? When did I ever betray you?"

Chuck pulled the door open and shook his head, whether out of disgust or disappointment, Gary couldn't tell. "When you brokered the deal to tear down McGinty's."

* * * * *

"And that's about it." Gary leaned back in the desk chair and swiveled in a short arc, watching the odd trio watch him. Or rather, two out of three were watching. "Two days ago, I woke up next to my wife and went to work. A few hours later, everything I knew had changed or disappeared."

"You don't remember owning McGinty's?" Miss Clark asked. "Or being friends with Crumb, or me?"

He shook his head, then realized she was still waiting for an answer. "No, I don't," he said loudly. Crumb rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry, but I only know you from the front desk. And this is the first time in my life I've seen Detective Crumb. Except for that article in the paper about the Christmas bombing." Gary stared at Crumb. The guy was obviously alive and in relatively good health, but Gary's memory superimposed a newspaper photo of him next to a shot of a police funeral. "As far as I know, you're supposed to be dead from an exploding teddy bear."

Miss Clark gasped. "That isn't what happened."

"Obviously. I remember Chuck, of course." Gary threw a glance at Chuck, who'd propped himself up against the file cabinets, the icepack held to his jaw. "But you've been so mad at me for the past year, I didn't think we were friends anymore."

"Are you sure you didn't hit your head?" Crumb asked.

"You're the one who insisted on the doctor."

"What exactly did the doctor say?" Miss Clark asked. She still looked stricken, as though someone had actually died.

"Clean bill of health," Crumb told her. "Nothing physical, nothing psychological, at least not at first look-see. He doesn't even have amnesia, technically. He remembers the last twenty-four hours, but he remembers them wrong."

"It's not twenty-four hours, it's my whole life!" Gary reached for the phone on the desk, then realized he didn't know what number to call. "I need to talk to my wife."

Chuck snorted. "Now I know you've lost it. Why would you want to talk to Marcia?"

"Haven't you listened to a word he's said? He thinks he's still married." Miss Clark's face was turned to Gary, but it creeped him out. Her eyes, if they'd worked, would have been focused somewhere just past his shoulder. "Why do you think that, Gary?"

"I don't think, I know. And I want to know why there's a defensive lineman living in my house."

"Your home is right up those stairs," she insisted. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to talk to Marcia right now. You seem vulnerable."

"What are you saying, I'm some kind of patsy? I'm not falling for this!" Her mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. "For one thing, I do not live above a bar."

"Is he serious?" Chuck asked the others.

"Seems to be," Miss Clark said, while Crumb snorted.

"Gar, you're weirding me out," Chuck said.

"I'm weirding _you_ out? You people did this to me."

"All I did was fly out from California to save your sorry ass!"

"Chuck," Miss Clark said in a schoolteacher voice, "don't you get it? He thinks everything he said is true."

"But it isn't." Chuck put the ice pack on the file cabinet. "Look, Gar, you are not married to Marcia."

"Of course I am."

"No," Miss Clark said. "You divorced two years ago."

"Don't make it sound so civil," Chuck said. "She threw a suitcase at him from a second story window."

"Marcia didn't—she wouldn't—"

"On your _anniversary_!" Chuck went on. "She already had the paperwork drawn up. It was all over in a couple weeks."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Both of you, stop," Miss Clark said. "Just listen for a minute." 

"Oh, this should be good," Chuck muttered. "Wisdom from the would-be psychologist."

"From his friend. I don't know what you've forgotten, or why," she told Gary, "so I'm going to fill you in. Stop me when you remember." Chuck cleared his throat. Shooting a glare his way, she took a deep breath, then words spilled out of her like gumballs out of a broken candy machine. "Not long after the divorce, you quit your job at Strauss and Associates. We'd become friends because—well, because you needed friends. We all did. And then about a year ago, you talked Barney Kaddison out of tearing down this place and turning the block into a parking garage. Mr. McGinty retired, and Mr. Kaddison gave you the deed to the bar. You moved in upstairs. We help you run the bar and take care of a few other things. Crumb came to work here after he retired because he's your friend. Chuck's been out in California for a couple of months, starting up a production company. Oh, and you have a cat whose name is Cat," she finished drily, "because that's the kind of creative guy you are."

"That's quite a story." Gary looked to Chuck to see his reaction to this fable, but Chuck nodded. "You expect me to buy all that?"

"Yes, because it's _true_ ," Miss Clark insisted. Gary'd never seen her so animated, but then, he'd never really seen her much at all. There hadn't been any reason to.

"She's right, Gar," Chuck said.

Gary turned to Crumb, who shrugged. "Dunno if I'd call us friends, but the rest sounds about right."

Why were they lying to him? He turned all the stuff he'd heard over in his head and picked one shard out of the improbable mess. "This cat I supposedly own, it wouldn't have orange stripes, would it? And a really crabby attitude?"

Miss Clark's face brightened. "Yes, that's it! You remember Cat, Gary, that's wonderful!"

"I don't remember. I saw one like it at the hotel this morning."

"Where is he?" Miss Clark asked. 

"Wherever hotel plumbers take wayward cats, I guess. I locked it in the bathroom."

"Oh, Gary."

"Don't 'Oh, Gary' me. That thing was probably rabid, yowling like a banshee. It scratched my arm!" Gary got up from the desk. "Nice try, lady, but if you'll excuse me, I need to find my wife."

Chuck ducked in front of him and put one hand on his chest. "Whoa, Gar, that's not a good idea."

"The hell it's not!" Gary's fist curled of its own accord.

"Hey, cut it out." Crumb wedged himself between the two of them and pushed Gary down into the chair. "You're not going anywhere until we sort this out."

"I'm not your prisoner."

"No, but you better get it through that thick head of yours that we are trying to help you, and you're lucky we are, because you ain't got nobody else." He left a second for that to sink in, then said, "If you really think you need to see her, we'll call your ex and get her here."

"I'm still not sure that's a good idea," Miss Clark said.

"It's the only way I'm staying." Broke or not, Gary was not vulnerable.

Crumb touched her shoulder, and it seemed to get through to her in a way Gary's protests couldn't. "Okay, fine. I don't know if I can convince her, but I'll do my best." She put on a pair of headphones and started typing. Those, he vaguely remembered her using in the office. "What was her maiden name?"

"Roberts." Gary stood, despite the looming presence of the supposed ex-cop. "This is a bar, right? My bar?"

"Of course it is," Crumb said.

"Good. I need a drink." Maybe he really was hallucinating, he thought hopefully. Maybe it was still the night before and all this was the gin talking.

"Now you sound like yourself." Chuck grabbed the ice pack. "I'll join you."

"Gary?" Miss Clark said. "Which hotel did you stay at last night?"

"The Marriott over on Michigan. Why?"

"I want to make sure Cat's okay."

"Better you than me." Gary pulled out his wallet. "Since you're doing all the phone calls, you want to see if you can find out why my credit cards don't work? Even my AmEx platinum is defunct."

Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. "Sure," she finally said. "But it's not as if I can read them."

"I'll help you out." Crumb took the whole wallet before Gary could get the cards out. "Not like you need this. It's your bar, right?"

Gary thought about grabbing it back. He had so little left that was his.

"Gar, drinks?" Chuck mumbled through the ice pack, which was on his jaw again.

Then again, none of his cards worked. "Please," he said, and followed Chuck out to the bar.

The place was crowded, but not overly so, and a waitress in an oxford shirt, khakis, and a little red apron nodded them to a small table in a corner. The owner's table, Gary assumed; from his chair he could see the whole floor, including the elevated section for the pool tables and jukebox, the front entrance, and the doors into the kitchen and office. 

"You want a Heineken?" the waitress asked him.

"I'd rather have—" he started, but at that moment a guy in the same uniform plopped a frosty mug in front of him and left one for Chuck as well. 

"Here you go, Mr. Hobson."

"You guys want a late lunch?" asked the waitress. 

"I'll have the Lunar Luau Limboburger," Chuck said.

She blinked at him. "The what?"

"The one with pineapple, blue cheese, and coleslaw."

"The number twelve?" 

"I guess. How long have you worked here?"

"Since way before you left." She rolled her eyes and turned from Chuck. "Mr. H., you want a bacon cheeseburger, extra pickles, right? It's on the house, like always," she said with a manic little wink.

"Uh, yeah, sounds good," Gary said. 

"I'm on it," she chirped, and was gone through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

"It's like _Cheers_ ," Gary muttered, and picked up the mug. "Everybody knows my name. And what I want, apparently."

"They like you," Chuck said. "Though I'm starting to have my doubts. Here's to you, Norm." He tapped Gary's glass with his, then held it to his purpling jaw. 

Gary felt a twinge of guilt. "You really didn't set this up?"

"Set what up? Seriously, Gar, how did you get so discombobulated? This is even weirder than your normal."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Chuck tapped a finger against his beer mug. "Maybe you should tell me."

The waitress came back with plates, plopped them down, and was gone. "My life is not weird," Gary told Chuck around a mouthful of cheeseburger. He swallowed, and his stomach gave a satisfied growl. "I've done everything I'm supposed to do, expect give my mom grandchildren."

Chuck snorted. "Lois always did have a one-track mind."

"And except for you spending the past year not talking to me, everything's been fine."

"Oookay." Chuck picked up his burger, which was roughly as tall as Gary's head. The pineapple slices slid back onto the plate. "I'll bite. Why am I not talking to you?"

"Because Strauss handles a lot of Barney Kaddison's investments, and when he tore this place down, Phil Pritchard made it my project." Phil had been testing him, Gary knew. "I lined up the investors. It was the right move for this neighborhood, plus I made sure old man McGinty got a fair price. It was a great deal for everyone involved, but you said you'd never forgive me."

"If that had happened," Chuck said with a half-grin, "I wouldn't have."

"You don't believe me."

Chuck waved a chip around his head, indicating the bar. "We're sitting here in a McGinty's that was never torn down, aren't we?"

"I guess so. You know, if the burgers had tasted half this good a year ago, I never would have agreed to Kaddison's deal. "

"What do I have to say to get it through that thick head of yours?" Chuck reached over and tapped the chip on Gary's forehead. "You didn't make that deal. You didn't do the thing you think I'm pissed at you about, ergo I'm not pissed at you."

"Ergo?"

"Producer talk." Chuck finally bit into the chip, spraying crumbs all over the table. "And I wouldn't know producer talk without you and the paper. That proves the paper is real."

"What is this paper you keep talking about?"

Chuck blinked at him for a couple of seconds, holding his burger halfway to his mouth. "The newspaper. Your newspaper. Your special delivery."

"The only newspaper I've seen today was the one that cat ripped up this morning."

Lowering his burger slowly, Chuck said, "Gar. _Gary_. Tell me you at least looked at it."

"Why should I care about yesterday's news? My whole life was falling apart. Still is."

Chuck's head went down on the table.

"What?" Gary almost laughed. Despite everything, it felt pretty good to be talking to Chuck after all this time.

Chuck looked up. He rubbed his jaw and winced. "If you didn't believe Marissa, you sure as hell aren't going to believe me. Look, you said this happened sometime yesterday, right? That's when you started to notice things were wrong?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, so this morning, you said there was a cat. And it came with a newspaper, right?"

"There was a newspaper there, but it wasn't _with_ the cat. It was just the complimentary one from the hotel."

"Was it the _Sun-Times_?"

"Yeah. The cat trashed it when it went nuts. So?"

Chuck closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Did you happen to notice anything unusual about that paper? Anything at all?"

"Just the front page. There was a train wreck yesterday. Miss Clark said something about it not being my fault, which I suppose is very generous of her. I don't even take the train."

"Gar."

"I own a BMW. I love that car. Hey, you know what's weird?" he asked around another bite of his burger. Having food in his stomach was helping clear his head. "There was another train wreck in the same place today."

"Yeah. Wow." Chuck was looking at him as though he'd grown an extra head again. Or maybe four. "That's quite a coincidence."

"Must be a problem with the tracks. I hope Daley gets it fixed. It's a safety hazard, not to mention a pain in the butt if you're trying to get anywhere in that part of town."

"Sure is." Chuck looked from Gary to his beer and back. "I'm just going to see how Marissa's coming with that call to Marcia, okay? Don't get up. Stay here and enjoy your lunch. I'll be right back." He nodded at the television behind the bar as he stood. "Look at that. Cubs are ahead for once."

"It's the Cubs," Gary reminded him. "They'll figure out a way to lose."

* * * * *

Gary gaped at the door after Chuck slammed it closed, trying to make sense of what he'd heard. There was no way he would have helped Barney Kaddison tear down McGinty's. Just like there was no way he could have made junior partner with Phil Pritchard as his boss. None of the past twenty-four hours made sense.

If he tried to deal with everything at once, he'd sink under the weight of it. He had no idea how he'd explain this to Chuck and Marissa at dinner, but it had to be easier than figuring out how to act around Marcia. He'd had a few weak moments at the house, sure, but he _knew_ this wasn't his life. The paper was sitting next to his desk in a briefcase, and he wasn't wearing a wedding ring. The mark on his finger was long gone. He examined the photos on the bookcase. Most of them were of him and Marcia: dancing, sailing, mountain climbing. There was one with his parents, all four of them laughing with the lake behind them. He thought about calling them, but dismissed the idea immediately. Telling them about the paper had caused more than enough chaos; he didn't know where he'd begin to explain this.

He'd forgotten the phone number for G. and M. Hobson, but it was listed in the employee directory in his top desk drawer. He called and left Marcia a message saying he'd be working late. Whatever had happened, she'd been kind to him, and she didn't deserve to be left waiting for him for a second night in a row.

He dropped onto the black leather couch and took the paper from the briefcase and read through it more carefully than he had back at the brownstone. The deli fire, which was still, maddeningly, at the same address where he'd found the coffee shop, had been averted by a customer who'd smelled the smoke in time. Why that hadn't been the story in the first place, he had no idea, but he remembered what it had said yesterday: two dead, the deli wiped out. Just like everything else, it had changed. There wasn't a word about the scuffle at the Gleacher Center, where all this had started with a talk about a space age, particle flipping computer. 

Staring off into memory, Gary replayed what had happened at the lecture. He'd tumbled down the steps. The professor had yelled at him. A strange woman had seemed to know him. Cat had vanished, and Gary had walked out into a Chicago that was utterly changed, at least in the spaces he'd called his own. One of which, according to Chuck, he himself had destroyed.

There wasn't a lot of paperwork in his office; that was kept with the secretarial pool, he remembered. So he called and asked for files on Dr. Daniel Stinton and McGinty's bar. The woman who brought them to him seemed shocked when he thanked her.

McGinty's first. There were documents with his signature detailing the sale of the property at 228 West Illinois Street to Barney Kaddison, and correspondence among Gary Hobson, Barney Kaddison, and Ed McGinty, along with dozens of potential investors. The prospectus he seemed to have written was the strangest, if only because it was the kind of thing Gary knew how to do but had usually tried to avoid. It contained all the financial details and projections that any investment broker would use to convince potential shareholders to take a chance, and really, if those numbers were accurate, the investors wouldn't be taking much of a chance at all. 

When he'd worked at Strauss, one of Pritchard's biggest complaints, which had been echoed by Marcia, had been that Gary should have been doing more to woo clients to the firm. He should have been more aggressive, should have put himself on the line more often so investors would be convinced he'd produce a strong return. Here was a file full of evidence that he'd figured out how to say and do the things he'd been taught, but without the uneasiness that had always managed to sneak its way in to his relations with clients. There was no trace in those letters of his fear of asking people to take risks with their money.

It was more than the assertive tone of the letters that made him think the person who'd written them was good at this job. There were also personal notes, a sentence here or there, different for each investor, proving the guy who'd written the prospectus knew enough about the investors, their families, and their plans for the future to build real relationships. If Gary'd received a letter like that from a broker, he might have been tempted to invest in the parking garage himself. Or so he thought, until he came across a stack of photos of the demolition, and his stomach flipped over. The first one was McGinty's as he remembered it, but in the next photo the building had a hole in the side, and then the top two floors were gone, and finally, it was nothing but a pile of rubble.

They couldn't be real. McGinty's was home. He never would have let his home be torn down for a parking garage. 

Of course, said an inner voice that sounded a lot like Marissa's, if he had done that, if everything people here were telling him was true, maybe he'd invented that story about saving the bar, about owning it and making it his home, to assuage his guilt. But if that had happened, he wouldn't know Marissa well enough to hear her in his head; he'd never use a word like "assuaged" on his own. But he did know her. They knew each other well enough to fight about how much time he spent running McGinty's, Chuck's creative bookkeeping, and whether or not she should be helping with the paper. He wasn't going to give up on that friendship just because she didn't remember it.

He slapped the McGinty's file down and pulled out the one on Stinton. It was a lot thinner: another prospectus, a list of potential investors, a bunch of science gobblety-gook written by a laundry list of researchers from the University of Chicago. He couldn't make heads or tails of most of it, but a few phrases caught his eye: "multiple dimensions"; "membranes between universes"; "particle flipping."

Particle flipping. Those students at the Gleacher Center had asked the professor about atoms switching places and holes in the fabric of space-time. The professor had said such things were decades in the future, but what if something along those lines had happened to him?

It couldn't be possible, could it? If they couldn't flip atoms between universes—completely theoretical parallel universes that no one could prove existed—how could it happen to a whole person?

But hell, a paper that told the future sounded like science fiction, too. Gary ran a hand through his hair. Where was tomorrow's paper, if it was real? Of course it was real, but so was this too-modern office with his name on the door. Maybe the paper hadn't gone anywhere; maybe _he_ had gone somewhere instead. Flipped between universes or dimensions by a computer that didn't work yet, that barely even existed. 

Yeah, because that made more sense than thinking he'd lost his mind and re-invented two years of his life.

He stood and stretched. His side ached where he'd been kicked, and he thought about Tagliotti and what he'd seen at the police station.

This time, he didn't ask for a file. He used the computer to get to the archives of the _Sun-Times_ and then the _Tribune_ , and then for good measure, he checked _USA Today_ , the _New York Times_ , and CNN. Most news outfits were just starting to get their archives online, but luckily they all had fairly recent stuff, as recent, at least, as December 24, 1996.

And every single one of them had a news story about the veteran Chicago detective who'd discovered the identity of a serial bomber and died stopping him at an ice rink, saving the lives of several civilians in the process.

No version of that story could be true. Not one. 

He re-read the Stinton file, searching for hints, for clues, for anything that would make this whole mess of a situation make sense.

* * * * * 

"There's nothing here that'll tell us what's going on," Crumb said. "AmEx platinum, Discover Card, bunch of business cards from Ms. CEO This and Mr. Esquire That."

"Gary doesn't have a Discover Card or an American Express. He has one Visa, and he pays it off every month." Marissa ran her thumb lightly over the phone's touchpad, not sure she wanted to make another call for Gary right now. Arguing with him about the paper or the bar was one thing. Being treated as though they weren't friends at all was something else entirely.

"You sure about that?"

"Who do you think takes care of the paperwork when he loses his wallet or ends up in the hospital? If he has those cards, they must be new."

"Not just the credit cards." A thin _tap-tap-tap_ issued from the desk across from her. "This driver's license says he lives on North Lakewood Avenue. Pricey neighborhood."

"Very pricey, and very _not_ Gary Hobson." Neither was wanting to see his ex-wife. Sure, Chuck's departure for Los Angeles had churned up Gary's fear of people leaving him, but until her appearance in his paper the day before, Gary hadn't said anything in well over a year about wanting to get back in touch with Marcia, let alone about wanting to be married to her. "What in the world is going on?"

"You got me," Crumb admitted. "This is definitely his picture on the driver's license. Fake I.D.?"

"With his own name on it? He's not some college student trying to sneak into a club. He owns a bar." She slumped back in her chair. "Something must have been going on with him for a while, if he has all that. Why else would he be so different?"

"I don't know, Marissa." Crumb's response was weary. She'd wrung it out of him too many times in the past half hour. But there had to be some explanation for Gary's behavior.

The door opened with a brief, agonized creak. "Any luck?" Chuck asked without preamble. 

"Depends on what you mean by luck," Crumb told him. "Where's Hobson?"

"Eating a burger, drinking a beer, talking like he's come unmoored from reality. You know, the usual."

"You left him alone?" Crumb pushed back so abruptly Marissa's desk vibrated and stomped out of the room.

"Don't think he'll be able to drop a parking garage on top of us without us noticing," Chuck muttered. His feet shuffled, and Marissa heard the squeak of Gary's chair as he sat. "But something's definitely wrong. The Lunar Luau Limboburger and the Hippy Dippy Super Shake are off the menu. What're you guys doing to my concept?"

"Gary doesn't want anything on the menu that customers would be too embarrassed to order."

"Huh." Chuck waited, as though he were expecting more, but she wasn't really up for discussing the finer points of marketing bar food. "How's it going in here?" he finally asked.

"I was able to reach Marcia. She didn't remember me, of course, but when I said Gary was having some trouble and wanted to talk to her, she seemed concerned."

"Probably thought you meant legal trouble."

"Maybe. I didn't want to explain all this over the phone, especially since I don't have the first clue what's going on. She's going to come by as soon as she can." She rubbed her fingers together. It was impossible to shake the sensation of Gary brushing her away, condescending to her, and treating her like a second-class citizen. "How's he doing?"

"He hasn't hit me again." Chuck sighed. "But he swears McGinty's shouldn't be here. Do you think it's possible he had some kind of a meltdown?"

"He hasn't been through anything particularly traumatic lately, though things around the paper have been really hectic since you left."

Chuck made a noise in the back of his throat. Was it irritation with her, or guilt? She'd always had more trouble reading him than Gary. "That's another thing," he finally said. "You know how he doesn't seem to know about the paper? It showed up in his hotel room this morning."

"With Cat, right?" Marissa drummed her fingers on the desk. "I called the Marriott, but all they'd say was that cats aren't allowed. Nothing about finding one in a room."

"He hates that cat," Chuck pointed out.

"He only says that because he thinks he's supposed to. But even if he's forgotten Cat, why would Gary ignore the paper?"

"He didn't just ignore it. He didn't know what it was." Chuck lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "He saw an article about a train derailment, and then he saw the actual derailment. He thinks they're two different accidents that happened on two different days."

This was not right for so many reasons, primarily because it was not _Gary_. "And he isn't upset about missing it?"

"He doesn't think it's his responsibility, so no."

"Does he look different to you?"

"Aside from the fact he's wearing Armani? He might have put on a few pounds, but it's hard to tell. I haven't seen him in months. Why? I mean, it's still Gary."

"I suppose so." She let her chair rock back. "It's just that, when I got close to him, he smelled different. I caught a whiff of women's perfume. It was faint, but it was there. It's one way I can tell a guy who's trying to pick me up is married."

"Nice work, Mrs. King. So Gar's got a girlfriend and he hasn't told us? Maybe she's poisoned him, or—ooh, maybe he's being gaslit by someone else. Or maybe he's doing it to us!"

"This is not a film noir, Chuck."

"You're right. Gar's not that creative." He shuffled some papers on Gary's desk. "You want to take a guess what it means? Because I am as lost right now as Marky Mark without his Calvin Kleins."

"I don't know." A grin tried to sneak its way onto Marissa's face, but never quite made it. She'd missed Chuck's bizarre pop culture references, even though she didn't know what half of them meant. She snapped her fingers, and Spike came trotting over for a head scratch. "Something's changed him, though I can't imagine what it could be. It's almost like the person out there isn't really Gary at all."

"An evil twin?" Chuck's voice rose hopefully. "Like on _General Hospital_?"

"Yes, Chuck, we've most certainly landed in a soap opera," she said drily. "Of course it's not that, not unless he has a twin we don't about."

"I've known Gar since we were in grade school," Chuck said. "Evil or not, he doesn't have a twin. Lois would never give up a kid. If she did, that twin wouldn't be named Gary and be married to Marcia. And his evil twin wouldn't have some reason to hit me. Which, as it turns out, Gary might actually have. Or believe he has, but anyway, the point is, he knows us, so he is Gary."

"He didn't know Crumb, and he barely seems to know me. But even before we were friends, Gary was never rude to me. I think he called me Miss Clark once, and after that I was Marissa, and he was Gary." Spike wandered away, and Marissa swallowed against a sudden lump in her throat. "Always."

"Hey, don't take this so personally. I can't handle both of you melting down." Chuck was interrupted by a sharp bark from Spike. She heard Chuck get up from the chair and walk toward the stairs. Spike's nails clattered up toward Gary's loft.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Dunno, but for once he wasn't barking at me." 

Marissa followed Chuck upstairs, where Spike's tail thumped against the wooden floor of the landing. Then there was another animal sound, a faint, confused mewling. "Cat?" she gasped. She felt furry warmth against her bare ankles, right about the same time a familiar rustling came from Chuck's direction. She picked up Cat and held on to him like an anchor. "Is it Gary's paper?"

"Yeah," Chuck said. "I haven't seen it in a couple months, but this is definitely the _Sun-Times_. And it's definitely tomorrow's."

* * * * *


	10. Chapter 10

_Quantum physics tells us that no matter how thorough our observation of the present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibility._  
_~Stephen Hawking_

* * *

Gary put the files in the briefcase and the piece of McGinty's brick in his pocket. He got to the reception area at five sharp, just behind Chuck, who was tiptoeing past Marissa's desk. Gary stepped in front of him. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Mr. Fishman thinks he can sneak past me," Marissa said with a faint smirk. "He never makes it, though sometimes I let him think he has."

"Oh, that's so generous," Chuck muttered. 

"You know what, she really is." Gary rapped on the desk. "Five o'clock. You ready?"

An odd, puzzled expression crossed her face, but she said, "Sure. Give me a minute to shut everything down."

Chuck looked from Gary to Marissa and back. "I thought we were going to dinner."

"We are. All of us."

Chuck repeated his imitation of a tennis audience. "Her?"

"Don't start, Chuck. I need to talk to both of you."

"I just want to know what the receptionist has to do with any of this."

"She's our friend."

Marissa's eyebrows couldn't have climbed any higher without leaving her forehead. "I am?"

"You are." He had to hold on to that much, to the three of them, or nothing else would make sense. Marissa unfolded her cane as she made her way around the corner of her desk. "Where's Spike?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your guide dog."

Her expression settled from surprise into something Gary couldn't quite read. Hard-won resignation, maybe. The tightness in her voice meant she was fighting for control. "I don't have a dog. Want one, but there's a long wait unless you have a lot of money or a sponsor. I don't have either. And since I've gotten by without a dog for this long, through...everything...I guess they figure I'm not a priority."

So many things in this place were wrong and frighteningly different, but this one made Gary angry. Spike was the first decent thing he'd done with the paper, and he was damned if he was going to let a space age computer undo it. But because this seemed like a touchy subject, he bit back his first response. "Okay, no dog yet. Don't worry, I've got it." He took her hand and guided it to his elbow, just like always, but Marissa seemed surprised by that, too. Her scowl softened into a thoughtful frown as they headed for the stairs. 

"Well, this is charming," Chuck drawled, shooting Gary a puzzled look as they negotiated the stairs and the lobby. "So where're we going for this dinner?"

He'd been picturing them at McGinty's, but McGinty's wasn't there. "What are you guys hungry for?"

"Since you're buying, steak and lobster." Chuck rubbed his hands together. "You still park over in the valet garage?"

"I thought we could just walk somewhere."

Chuck spun around, glaring. "The only reason I said yes is so I could get a ride in that hot rod of yours. If you're going to come crawling back in your time of need after what you've done, the least you can do is spend some of your precious money on your ex- and imaginary friends."

"Chuck!" Gary snapped, and Marissa jumped, dropping her hand from his arm. "I don't know who you think I am, or what's going on here, but we _are_ friends. All of us. And the Chuck I know doesn't turn down a friend when he asks for help."

"The Gary I know wouldn't deign to ask for help from me, let alone her." 

This was the Chuck he'd known before his divorce and the paper, amplified a few percentage points. "I'm not that guy," Gary told him. "And no matter what you think I am, Marissa hasn't done anything to you."

"I know that, probably better than you do."

"So would you at least try to be civil? What d'ya mean, better than I do?" 

Chuck could be so annoyingly Chuck-like at times, but this was ridiculous. They stood, locked in a glare-down while departing workers flowed around them and out the revolving doors, until Marissa cleared her throat. "I don't need either one of you to fight my battles," she said in that prim voice she used when she was annoyed as hell at both of them and thought she was above taking part in the bickering. "Even I can see this isn't a good idea. I'll take a cab home."

"No!" Gary grabbed her arm to stop her from leaving, and she went stiff, her eyes wide, almost—no, there was no "almost" about it. She looked terrified. It was one more thing wrong, but everything was wrong, and if something didn't go right soon, he was going to lose his tentative grip on sanity.

Chuck took a step toward them. The annoyance was gone from his face, replaced by something that looked a lot like concern. He reached out as if to pull Gary away from Marissa, but stopped short of touching either one of them. 

"Please, Marissa, I just—" Gary stammered hoarsely, but he didn't let go. He couldn't. "I need you guys. I need both of you, and I need you to listen to me. I know this is out of left field, but I'm telling you, you are my friends. The best friends I've ever had. I've had a really, deeply weird couple of days. My home's disappeared, everyone I know seems to have forgotten me, I slept in the park last night, and I was robbed."

Marissa gasped.

"Everything's wrong, everything's upside down," Gary went on, "and this whole time, I've known that if I could just talk to the two of you, we could figure this out, the way we always do. I need you guys. Please."

Marissa pulled free of his grip, but she didn't move away. Chuck glanced at her, gauging her reaction like he'd done a thousand times, at least in Gary's memory. He had to make them believe him. 

"I know you, Marissa," he ventured, trying to keep his voice steady. "You went blind when you were really young, less than two years old. You went to Crane High School. Your dad was an offensive lineman, played for the Bears, so you're a die-hard fan." Chuck snorted, but Gary ignored him. "You talk to your mom and your sisters every day, and you wear that cross with the St. Jude medal because your grandmother gave it to you. You always say she's the one who taught you how to listen to people."

Her hand went to her neck, where he could see the chain that dropped below the collar of her blouse. Once again, he couldn't quite read her expression. It was too guarded. "How could you possibly know all that?"

"Yeah, Gar, that's pretty stalkerish," Chuck said.

He tried to make his voice gentler. "I know that stuff because we're friends, because you told me. And now all I'm asking is that you listen to me. Please."

"I never told you any of that," Marissa finally said, her expression still closed. "But I want to know how you found out. As long as we go to a public place, I'll listen. If either of you try anything, I have the police on speed dial." She pulled a cell phone out of her purse. "In fact, I'm going to call my dad just to let him know who I'm with, in case anything happens."

"Nothing's going to happen." Gary stared at her as she pressed buttons on her phone. He turned to Chuck. "What would happen?" Chuck just shrugged. "What about you, you in?"

"Fine." Chuck stomped toward the revolving doors. "But you're still buying. And we're taking your car."

"Thank you," Gary breathed. 

Phone call finished, Marissa reached for his arm. That, at least, felt a little bit normal. "Marissa, you have to believe me, I wouldn't hurt you."

"I don't think you would," she said as he guided her through the revolving doors and out into the warm summer evening. "But to be honest, I'm not sure why I believe that." 

"Because you have good instincts," Gary told her. "And because we really are friends." He'd do whatever it took to prove it.

* * * * *

The ex-cop who'd died over a year ago kept a close eye on Gary from his post at the bar while they both pretended to watch the Cubs blow yet another third inning lead. After a couple beers, the idea of a corpse serving drinks in a place that was itself a ghost didn't sound as bad as it could have.

All around them, McGinty's hummed with conversation. Everyone seemed comfortable, at home with the rhythm of the place. Crumb's big hands twirled tumblers and poured drinks with surprising dexterity, though his attention wasn't on bartending. Every time Gary so much as shifted in his chair, Crumb looked over at his table. Gary's fingers were itching to pick up a pool cue, but he figured if he did that, Crumb would join him and corner him. For similar reasons, he wasn't about to go into the office where Chuck was holed up with Miss Clark.

He sent the waitress for another beer, but it was Crumb who came over. He plopped a mug of coffee on the table. 

"You really don't need more to drink, especially since we're not sure what happened to your head."

"You said the doctor said I was fine."

"Do you feel like you're fine?"

"Good point." Gary sipped at the coffee and coughed, wondering if Crumb had invented a new, non-toxic paint remover. Another sip, and he wasn't so sure about the non-toxic part. Crumb stood over him, arms crossed. "Do you think she'll do it?"

"Do what?"

"Call Marcia."

"If Marissa says she'll do something, it gets done. You ought to know that much."

"I'm getting the feeling I really don't know anything," Gary muttered. As if in answer, the front door opened, and the afternoon light silhouetted a lone female figure through the frosted glass of the foyer. "Marcia," Gary breathed. He'd know her anywhere, even in a ghost bar. He could feel Crumb's gaze on him as he walked, in a trance, to meet her. She didn't look like someone who'd spent a night worried about her missing husband, nor did she look exactly the same as she had the morning before, but she was still, indubitably, Marcia. "Hi," he managed, and bent to kiss her.

"Gary." She turned her head and the kiss landed on her cheek. She shot a wry grin at his cat-torn sleeve. "Nice shirt. What's going on?"

"I was hoping you could tell me." He led her to the table and pulled out a chair for her. "Something weird's going on, and I missed you last night. I missed everything. Couldn't even find my way home."

She glanced around the bar, blinking hard, which she always did when she was trying to process a surprise. "Clearly that's solved now."

"No it isn't." He leaned in closer and lowered his voice; he would have reached for her hand, but she'd tucked them both on her lap under the table. "You're not going to believe the things these people are telling me."

She lifted one perfect eyebrow and wrinkled her nose, a sure sign she wasn't happy. "We've talked about this before, Gary."

"We have?"

"Yes, and I've told you, if you need legal advice about the bar, I can recommend someone, but it's not a good idea for it to come from me. I thought you understood that."

"This isn't about legal advice! God, Marcia what the hell is going on? Did you even notice I was gone? And why did you cut your hair?" 

"I've worn my hair like this since the divorce."

All the air left his lungs. He'd thought once he found Marcia, everything would make sense again. No matter what else those people had told him, she was the one thing that shouldn't have changed. 

But she had, and not just her hair. She was looking at him the way she looked at clients, at people she barely knew. She never looked at him that coldly, even when they fought. "Look, hon," he began, pitching his voice lower and lacing his fingers together, "I know things get rocky between us. We're both under a lot of stress, working hard, but the world's gone nuts, and I really need you to be my wife."

"Ex-wife. Who just made full partner, by the way."

He had to open and close his mouth a few times before words would come out. "No. Not you, too." He reached for her, for real this time, but she pulled back, her forehead crinkling.

"You don't believe I made partner?"

"No! I mean, yeah, sure, of course you made partner, no one deserves it more, but that was six months ago. And there's no way we're divorced. We've fought before, but we always work it out. If things had been that bad, I'd remember!"

She tilted her head to one side. "Do you have a concussion?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

"I'd guess it's because you're not acting like yourself." She nodded toward the bar. "Your bookkeeper sounded worried about you. And she congratulated me. How did she know about the promotion, if you didn't?"

Gary looked in the direction she'd indicated. Miss Clark sat on a stool with a cat— _the_ cat—on her lap. She was speaking intently to Crumb while Chuck leaned back on the bar, making no effort to hide the fact he was watching Gary.

"I went to our house last night," he told Marcia, throwing the words at her and hoping something he said would breach the wall, "but there were strange people there."

"That would make sense, seeing as neither one of us has lived there in well over a year."

"Marcia, please. The past twenty-four hours have been confusing as hell." He gestured at the trio of tormentors near the bar. "These people are trying to tell me that I live here, that I own this bar that was torn down a year ago." Her frown deepened, she shook her head, and Gary felt it all slipping even farther away. "Don't you remember? We celebrated my commission by buying our house in Lincoln Park. They must have rebuilt it," he said, running a hand through his hair. "McGinty's, I mean. That's the only thing that makes sense."

Her expression defrosted, just a bit, but now she put the hint of condescending kindness she used for those she considered weak or terminally stupid in her voice. "You're the one not making sense," she said. "Have you been getting enough sleep?"

"I'm telling you, it's not me, it's _them_."

"Maybe you should listen to them." Marcia reached for her briefcase, but Gary leaned forward and grabbed her arm. Staring at him, she said, "I don't know what's happening. It's clear something is wrong, but Gary, I can't help you."

"You can't help me?" That was the last response he would have expected. "What happened to us being a team? After everything I've put into it, into _us_ —even back in college, when I quit the football team and took up golf so I could network with your father's friends, and then I got the job and worked eighty hour weeks so we could take out a mortgage to buy the brownstone in Lincoln Park, and then another loan to gut and remodel the place. I stopped going to poker nights at Chuck's and pool nights here at McGinty's so we could have date nights and build something together, something solid and real, and now when it's all falling apart, you won't stand by me?"

Anger flared in her eyes, then dissolved into wounded defiance. "No," she said, chipping the word out of ice. "You didn't do any of those things. That was the whole problem with us, Gary. You wouldn't change your comfortable, no-responsibilities life for me, or make some decisions, or God forbid, pick a direction and head that way."

He let go of her arm. "We picked it together!" She'd helped him figure out how to work with Phil, after all.

"I was the one who saw we weren't going to work. I was going in one direction, and you weren't going anywhere. I did what was best for both of us when I threw that suitcase out the window."

"No, you didn't. You wouldn't." His voice cracked like a teenager's. "Stop lying, damn it."

"You really think I am, don't you? You poor thing." She stood, briefcase in hand, and looked down at him. "You know, right after the divorce I thought you were changing. I thought you'd found your path. But I was obviously wrong."

Gary got up. She was wearing the same high heels as always, so they were at almost the same level. "So that's it? We're over?"

"We've been over for nearly two years."

That wasn't right. It couldn't possibly be right. Two nights ago they'd slept in the same bed. He knew how that felt, knew the flowery-sweet smell of her shampoo, the way her body curled into his, knew what every expression that had ever crossed her face meant. "I love you," he said, and put the weight of all the years he'd been in love with her into it. He held out a hand to her, but she just looked down at it, blinking sadly. 

"I still care about you, Gary," she said, "but not like that. And I don't hate you, either, certainly not enough to lie to you the way you're accusing me of doing."

He ran the neglected hand through his hair. "I don't understand what's happening to me."

"I suggest you get some professional help." She flashed him the tiny, thin smile that said she was trying to make a joke but knew she was no good at it. "Judging by your new wardrobe, I'd say you can afford it."

"Marcia—" 

"Hey, Gar." Chuck thumped Gary on the back with a rolled-up newspaper. "We gotta go."

"Chuck." Marcia's mouth twisted. "I should have known you were behind this. What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing you need to worry about." He held out a business card. Gary made out a director's chair in the logo before Marcia took it between two manicured fingertips.

"You think you're a producer?" She looked over at Gary for confirmation. He just shrugged. "In Hollywood?"

"Give me a call sometime." Chuck swayed on the balls of his feet. "I've got a role you'd be perfect for. It's so hard to find convincing older actresses for the really witchy parts." He grabbed Gary's sleeve and tugged. "Let's go."

Why would Chuck think he'd go with him, when his wife was standing right there ripping his heart away? "I can't."

Marcia shook her head and dropped the business card on the table. "Maybe I should be asking what's wrong with you, Chuck. I thought you were his friend." Her nose wrinkled as she said the word. 

"I always have been," Chuck started angrily, "even when you—"

Marcia cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Then get him the help he so clearly needs. Bye, Gary."

She started for the front door. Gary would have gone after her if Chuck hadn't grasped his arm more firmly. "It isn't worth it."

"Marcia?" he called anyway.

She waggled her fingers without looking back, and was gone.

"Gary, come on," Chuck insisted. "We'll be late."

Gary pulled free, sat back down, and reached for a beer that wasn't there. Just a cup of something that was supposed to be coffee. "Whatever it is, it can wait."

Chuck smacked him on the shoulder with the newspaper. "No, it can't. C'mon."

Ignoring him, Gary stalked to the bar. "If you really are a bartender," he told Crumb, "and this really is my place, then I need you to do your job and make me a Bombay Sapphire and tonic."

Crumb snorted. "Go with Fishman."

"The hell I will." He turned to Miss Clark, who sat stiffly on her stool, clutching the cat. "What did you say to my wife on the phone? She thinks I'm nuts."

"She's not your wife."

"Stop saying that!" He took a step toward her, and she didn't flinch. Of course she didn't. She couldn't see him, couldn't see what she and her friends were doing to him. Chuck grabbed his arm and pulled him back. 

"Gar, will you just trust me for once?"

"After the day I've had, you want me to trust you?"

"I'm trying to help you. After you hit me, I might add." And no matter how hard Gary stared at him and his bruised jaw, Chuck didn't break. 

Chuck always broke. His pranks were all about getting attention, and he couldn't get attention if he never got credit. Gary gulped. Whatever this was, it was far, far beyond a prank. He swayed a little and grabbed the bar rail for support.

"Gar?" Chuck asked. "You okay?"

He was the opposite of okay, and Chuck knew it. "Where do you want me to go?"

Chuck cast a sidelong glance at Crumb. He nodded at Miss Clark. "We figured if I took you around to see some of your old haunts, it might bring your memory back."

"There isn't anything wrong with my memory." Truth be told, he wanted to obliterate the memory of Marcia walking out that door.

"I know this seems wrong," Miss Clark said, "but for right now, you need to go with Chuck. It will help more than you know." Gary opened his mouth to protest, but she said, "We're your friends, Gary. If you don't believe anything else, believe that we want to help."

Gary didn't know who to trust. It didn't seem to be Marcia, and he sure as hell didn't trust his own brain at this point. "Why would you help me after I hit you?" he asked Chuck. The Chuck he knew didn't forgive anything.

But this Chuck shrugged. "I'm chalking it up to a psychotic break." He jabbed a thumb at Miss Clark. "She's the one taking head shrinking classes, so if she thinks it'll help, I'm willing to give it a shot."

"Will it bring Marcia back?"

"We're hoping it will bring _you_ back," Miss Clark said.

Gary wasn't sure he wanted to go back if it meant life without the woman he loved.

"There's not much time," Chuck said pointedly.

"Just go with him, will you?" Crumb said. "If it doesn't work, I'll let you hit him again."

* * * * *

"Wow," Gary said when the parking garage attendant drove up in a BMW and handed him the keys. Chuck hadn't been kidding. It was a deep red shot of adrenaline, gleaming through the early evening shadows of the skyscrapers.

Chuck shot him a wary look. "Can I drive?"

The "no" was on Gary's lips, but his wallet was gone, and maybe this was one way to get Chuck on his side. "Sure," he said instead, and helped Marissa into the car. The BMW purred through the mess of early-evening traffic. It was all stop and start, crawl and wait, but through the floorboards Gary felt the harnessed power waiting to be set loose.

No one said much on the drive, except for picking a restaurant. Chuck wanted one of the pricey steakhouses in River North, and was pissed when Gary told him about his hundred dollar limit and stolen credit cards. Not that his credit cards would have worked here, wherever "here" was. He was more confused about that than ever after what he'd read about Dr. Stinton's computer.

They ended up at the first Chinese restaurant they came across that didn't look like a dive. He wouldn't have put it past Chuck to order the most expensive thing on the menu just to spite him, whether it was a forty-ounce sirloin, lobster Béarnaise, or Peking duck, so Gary was glad to see it had a fixed-price buffet. The place wasn't big; even better, it wasn't crowded. Red tablecloths and low lighting were the order of the day, and goldfish swam in small bowls at the center of each table. "I'll get your food," Gary told Marissa.

"You think you know what I like?"

How many nights had they ordered takeout, especially that first year at the Blackstone? "Let me try, okay?"

She held up her hands. "Fine." Gary figured it meant she was only giving him rope to hang himself.

"Why her?" Chuck asked as they filled plates at the buffet station. "I mean, don't you have to be careful about your friends, what with Marshal Marcia watching your every move? Or was that just me?"

"What is your—" Gary bit back the rest. He'd seen enough in the files to know at least part of what Chuck's problem was. "Look, Marissa's important. You'll see when I tell you what's going on."

Chuck's face twisted into a scowl. Bright red sauce dripped off the ladle he held suspended over his plate. "You know why she's so skittish, right? I mean, I know you don't pay a lot of attention to us peons in cubicleville, but you had to have heard."

"Heard what?" He hadn't seen Marissa's name in any of the files he'd read that afternoon.

Chuck dropped the ladle, spattering sauce on the sneeze guard. "I know you've changed, but I always thought you—" He broke off with a disgusted shake of his head.

"I _what_?"

"You know so much about her, you figure it out." Chuck left Gary befuddled and stomped back to the table. 

"Kung Pao's at high noon," Gary told Marissa when he returned with their plates. He turned away from Chuck's still-scowling gaze. "Szechuan Beef at three, cashew chicken at six, egg roll at nine, rice is here on the side." He plunked down a bowl so she could hear it and pushed a set of chopsticks to her fingers. "How'd I do?"

"All my favorites." She looked a little bewildered. Maybe he'd gone too far. Pretty soon she'd decide Chuck was right about Gary stalking her. But he had to convince them of the truth. If this didn't work, he didn't know what he'd do. 

He watched her as he picked at his General Tso's chicken, wondering what the hell Chuck had been dancing around. He could have sworn she was thinner than the Marissa he'd last seen at McGinty's, and not necessarily in a good way, but he knew better than to bring up weight with any woman. There was a scar just in front of her ear that he didn't remember. That wasn't good, but he didn't know how to ask about it, or how he could even begin to figure out what was going on. Any time she'd been in trouble lately, it'd been because of the paper. This Marissa didn't even know the paper existed.

Chuck slurped up a noodle and asked, "So, what's the topic of this confab?"

Gary hesitated, fumbling with his chopsticks. He didn't want to get this wrong, but he wasn't used to walking on eggshells around Chuck and Marissa. "Would you guys tell me what you think you know about me?" he finally asked.

Chuck blinked at him. "How far back do you expect me to go?"

"Since I have the least to tell, I'll start," Marissa said. "You're Mr. Hobson. I'm still trying to get used to thinking of you as Gary. You've been Mr. Pritchard's right-hand man for three or four years, at least since I've been at Strauss. You're known among the secretarial pool for being fair, but if Pritchard overrides you, you step back."

"More like somersault at top speed," Chuck muttered.

Gary ignored him. "What else?" he asked Marissa.

"I know that you're married, and that you put in a lot of hours." She tilted her head. "Is that what this is? Overwork can cause all kinds of psychological problems. Are you under too much stress?"

"You have no idea."

She twirled her chopsticks in the rice bowl, and her voice tightened again. "Stress or not, I really want to know how you know so much about me and why you went to my apartment last night."

"I needed help."

"So you went to her house?" Chuck asked. "What am I, chopped liver?"

"I thought you were in California," Gary said, "and as it turns out, you seem pretty ticked off at me, so yeah, I went to Marissa. I knew you would help," he told her. "Or at least I thought you would."

"I didn't know who you were. You sounded—" She paused, and Gary jumped in.

"Kind of threatening. I didn't mean to be. I didn't know you didn't know what I thought you knew."

"I was going to say desperate." Marissa picked up some rice in her chopsticks, then opened them and let the rice drop back into the bowl. "Was this before or after you were robbed?"

"Before. But it's not your fault," he added when she winced. "I made the mistake of sleeping on a park bench." Gary ran a hand over his still-sore chest. "This morning some kids pulled me off the bench, took my wallet, kicked me around."

Chuck finally dropped the scowl. "Geez, Gar, why'd Marcia lock you out?"

"I didn't know there was a Marcia, at least not one who gave a damn about me. I thought—" Gary broke off, interrupted by the soft, rhythmic _clinkclinkclink_ of Marissa's chopsticks vibrating against the fishbowl. The goldfish swam excited circles through the water. Gary put a hand over her shaking fist. "What's wrong?"

She yanked her hand away, chopsticks and all. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't recognize you last night. I didn't expect you. I'm so sorry."

"Hey, don't say that." Marissa hated that word. "If you didn't know me, you were right not to let me in." Even though that wasn't like her, friend or not. She kept spare change in her pockets to give to homeless people, for Pete's sake. Gary looked at Chuck, hoping for some clue, but his face was stone. "I'm guessing you wouldn't have, either, even though we've known each other since we were kids." 

Chuck shrugged. "You tell me."

"C'mon, Chuck, we went to school together. We both majored in business, both passed the broker's exam, and then we got jobs at Strauss, right?" Chuck nodded. "So when did things change? This has to be bigger than one mistake with McGinty's."

Chuck slid a look over at Marissa, who was moving food around her plate. Gary knew she was paying attention to more than what was being said and was thinking a lot of things she wasn't ready to say yet, but Chuck didn't seem to get that. He raised an eyebrow and mouthed, _In front of her_?

"Please don't do that, Mr. Fishman."

Gary choked on his water at the look on Chuck's face. Marissa had told him once that she did stuff like that on the chance that it would work, but he'd never seen it not work. "You can talk in front of Marissa, Chuck."

He shrugged. "It's not like I have anything to be ashamed of. You want to know when things changed?" He pointed a fork at Gary. "They changed when you dropped out of my life. You married Marcia, you started going to dinner parties and cocktail affairs and golf outings and yacht cruises, so you could be whatever the hell it was she wanted you to be."

"That's not true."

"That's what it looked like from the outside, which is where you put me. You stopped coming to poker nights and ball games. You were too busy to even have lunch with me." He shoved an entire crab Rangoon into his mouth, then said around it, "You got whipped, buddy, and then you got promoted, and it was like you were buying Marcia's press releases." He winced as he swallowed. "People grow apart, I get that, but I thought our friendship still meant something, that you'd at least come watch a football game or play pool when Marcia was out of town and Pritchard didn't have you tethered."

Gary knew none of that had happened, but he knew Chuck, too. He could be overly dramatic, sure, but he believed what he was saying this time. "I take it I didn't do those things."

"Once in a while you did, but it got to be less and less often. And then you tore down McGinty's."

"I didn't tear it down. I swear that was not me. I had no idea it was gone until yesterday." Because it wasn't gone, not really. Not where he came from.

"Of course you did. Cindy told me you requested the files today."

"Cindy?"

"Yeah, Cindy, the new babe over in the secretarial pool."

"Babe?" Marissa squeaked.

"And I ain't talking about the pig. At least I know her name, which is more than we can say for Gary. That's just like you," Chuck told Gary, "and the thing is, it never used to be."

Gary gulped. "No, the thing is, I read those files, and I don't remember any of that happening."

Chuck's jaw worked. "Right."

"Just tell me," he pleaded. "Pretend I have amnesia or something."

Chuck scowled, but Gary stared him down. "Fine." Chuck threw up his hands. "Fine. When I found out McGinty's was on the chopping block, I went to you. I begged you to stop Kaddison, but you wouldn't go against Pritchard. I swear he made you do it because he knew that place meant something to you once upon a time. He wanted to break you, and he did."

"So all that's why you're not talking to me?"

"Yeah. Oh, _what_?" Chuck demanded when Marissa tried to hide a smirk behind her hand. Gary felt a flash of relief. Whether Chuck deserved it or not, it was better than seeing her look so afraid.

"For not talking to him, you sure said a mouthful. Did you really end a friendship over a sports bar?"

Chuck rolled his eyes. "It wasn't just a sports bar. It was—"

"Home," Gary finished. "I don't blame him. If I really had done that, _I_ wouldn't talk to me."

"Why are you trying to deny it? I thought you were proud. You made a hell of a commission, and it got you that house in Lincoln Park."

"There's no house. I mean, there is, but it's not mine."

"There sure as hell isn't any McGinty's." Chuck sounded almost as stricken as Gary felt about that. "At least you made Marcia proud when you tore it down."

"Marcia's your wife?" Marissa asked.

"My ex. She dumped me. Pretty much literally." Chuck's eyebrows lifted, and Gary took the opening that confession had bought him. "Look, two years ago, you and I were both brokers. I felt stuck in the job, like our little goldfish friend here. Pritchard pretty much hated my guts. Then Marcia—"

"Convinced you to come over to the dark side," Chuck finished.

"Nope. She threw my suitcase out a window on our anniversary and went in search of a better partner, somebody who wanted to dance to her tune. Eventually she left Pritchard at the altar." Chuck choked; even Marissa lifted an eyebrow. "But that's not the point. The point is, right after she did that a cat showed up at my door with a newspaper." He leaned in close. "The next day's newspaper. I didn't understand it at first, but you, the two of you, you helped me figure out what it was, and what it was for."

There was a moment of dead silence. Chuck blinked at Gary, and Marissa went very, very still.

"Did you sneak a glass of plum wine without sharing?" Chuck asked. "Or maybe a whole bottle?"

"No, I swear, it's the truth. I get tomorrow's newspaper today. Or I did, until everything fell apart yesterday."

"What is it for?" Marissa asked in little more than a whisper.

"See, that's the thing, you knew right away," Gary told her. "You told me I should try to help the people who were in the stories, the car accidents and the robberies and worse. Between the three of us, we've stopped a lot of bad things from happening to people. I couldn't have made it this far without the both of you."

Chuck let out a low whistle. "That's quite the little fairy tale you cooked up there, buddy."

"It's not." Gary poked at the tabletop with a finger. "You're not supposed to hate me, you're supposed to believe me, because we're still friends because of that paper. And it's because of the paper that McGinty's is still standing. I own it. We run it together, the three of us, or we did until you took off for California to produce movies."

Chuck's jaw dropped. "You have gone off the deep end." 

"No, look, it's right here." Gary pulled the tattered, wrinkled copy of the _Sun-Times_ from the inside pocket of his suit coat and handed it to Chuck. 

"That's today's paper," Chuck said flatly.

"Yeah, but I got it yesterday. And it's different than what you'll find on the newsstands. That's the other thing I need to talk to you about. I should have tomorrow's paper, but it didn't show up today, and that's how I know I'm in trouble. I did a little research this afternoon, and I have an idea about what's happening here, about why I remember this stuff and you don't."

Both his friends sat silent for a moment, then Chuck blinked. "I have an idea," he said. "My idea is that you have finally lost it, thanks to spending too much time with Pritchard, and you're trying to drag us into your paranoid delusion. Messing with me, I get, but why would you do this to her? That's just low."

"I'm not doing anything to her—to you," Gary said, turning to Marissa. "I swear I'm not. Marissa, please. Tell me you believe me."

"Mr. Hobson—"

"Gary."

Her lips formed a G, then she started again. "I'm very confused by all this. Mr. Fishman's right. What do I have to do with it?"

"You believed in the paper before I did," Gary told her. "It's like you understood that it was possible, and what it was for, and you were right. I couldn't have helped most of the people I've saved if it wasn't for you and Chuck."

"But this isn't possible."

"I know it must seem that way, but I promise it's true." Gary reached for something, anything, that would get her to buy into the paper's odd brand of magic, the way Marissa had back at the beginning. "Look, I'm not the first person to get this paper. There's a guy named Morris who works in the _Sun-Times_ archives. Before me, this special paper came to a man named Lucius Snow. Morris knew him. I think Morris knows plenty about how the paper works, at least where I come from." Why hadn't he thought of looking for Morris sooner? 

"Where you _come from_?" Chuck said slowly. "What, are you some kind of pod person?"

Gary drew in a deep breath. At least this part had to do with science. "The thing is, there are parallel universes, right? And they bump into each other, and yesterday, there was a guy with a really advanced computer over at the Gleacher Center, and I was there, and I think things got mixed up, that I got shoved into some kind of alternate reality—alternate for me, that is—and that's why you don't remember how things really are, because where you are isn't where I'm really from."

Chuck gaped at him. "That doesn't make sense. Nothing you've said makes sense. Except the part about Marcia throwing you out. That I believe. That woman can be a stone-cold—"

"Chuck!"

"Well, she can. But the rest of it belongs on the SciFi Channel."

"No, look, you have to believe me. Both of you. Marissa, please."

She opened and shut her mouth, picked up her chopsticks and set them back down. Finally, she came out with, "My grandmother used to say the simplest explanation is always the best." 

"And the simplest one here is that I'm crazy," Gary finished. "I know how it sounds, but it's true. I get that paper and use it to help people all the time. Suicides, drownings, car wrecks, bombs, assassinations, skateboarding accidents, robberies. You name it, I've stopped it. We've stopped it, together. We're a team."

"Like superheroes?" Chuck asked.

Gary couldn't help a grin when he remembered Marissa telling him he might look good in a cape. That visit to his hotel room had been the first time she'd gotten on his nerves with her well-intended pushiness. "No tights, no capes. Mostly it's just little things, everyday accidents, ordinary people. I can't stop everything, but I do my best. We've kept a lot of people here in Chicago safe the past couple years."

"You've 'kept people safe'?" Marissa asked, so tightly Gary thought her vocal chords might snap.

"I wouldn't lie to you," he promised.

"You're lying right now," Marissa said. "You have to be."

"But you're the one who's always listened. You've always believed."

"That you're some kind of hero who stops bad things from happening to innocent people? That you're my friend? Is this your idea of a joke?"

"I swear it's not."

"And yet," she said, and now she was all cold and closed off, pulling herself up straight as a queen, "bad things do happen, and you've never seemed to care much about them." 

"But I do care. The other Gary Hobson, the one you know, that isn't me. We switched places." The only time Gary had ever felt this dislocated around Chuck and Marissa was when they hadn't been Chuck and Marissa, when they'd been Morris and Eleanor in 1871 and he'd had to help her in order to stop a huge disaster in his own time. "Maybe that's why I'm here," he said. "To help you somehow."

She slapped her napkin on the table. "It's a little late for that, don't you think? Excuse me. I'll take a cab home."

"Marissa!" Gary grabbed her hand, and she flinched. Again. "Please. I'm not making this up. I know it's real. I know you're my friend. Whatever it is that's upsetting you, I—" He sucked in a breath as what she'd said sank home. "What do you think I've done to you?"

"Nothing." She pulled her hand away and stood, snapping her cane out to its full length. "You did nothing. If this is your way for asking for help for whatever your real problem is, it's a truly terrible way to go about it."

While Gary sat there, mouth hanging open, Chuck got up and pointed Marissa toward the door. "About twenty feet or so, straight ahead," he told her. "Be right behind you."

"Chuck!" Gary stood too, blocking Chuck's exit. "C'mon, what happened?"

Chuck's jaw worked for a moment. "She's right, you know. I don't know what you think you're doing, but this is not even remotely funny."

"I'm not joking! Please, just tell me."

"Look it up in your magic paper, why don't you?" Eyes narrowed, Chuck looked Gary up and down. "I'm going to make sure she gets home okay, and you need to get some professional help." A couple steps, and he turned back. "This has been good for me. I used to be so mad at you, but now I know I was right to move on. You're not worthy of my anger. You're just pathetic." He caught up with Marissa, fumbling through the best way to guide her out the door. Gary couldn't make his feet move after them.

It didn't matter what universe he ended up in. The paper was real. McGinty's was real. The three of them, friends, and Gary doing everything he could to make sure his friends were safe, that whatever had turned Marissa into this doubtful, scared person and turned Chuck against him, didn't ever happen—that was real.

It had to be. If not, he would _make_ it real.

* * * * *


	11. Chapter 11

_Bring your family, bring your family_  
 _It's the Great Unknown_  
 _You can look, but you can't fathom_  
 _It's the Great Unknown_  
_~Dar Williams_

* * *

 

Outside the bar, Chuck waved Gary to a rented Taurus. Once they'd pulled away from the curb, he handed Gary a copy of the _Sun-Times._ "Here it is, buddy. Crumb doesn't want to know, so we thought it would be better if I showed you once we were out of there."

"It's the newspaper. Same one they passed out at the hotel this morning. Do you think Marcia would come back if I told her about the identity theft?"

"Forget about Marcia, Gar, it's a dead end. God, you are the densest—Okay, look, you saw the cat in the bar, right? He brought the paper, just like he always does."

"That orange furball? How could it bring a newspaper?"

Chuck shrugged. "You ask me, why is more important than how. Cat lets us know when there's a problem to take care of. Like Marissa said, maybe it'll jog your memory."

"The last thing I want is to be around that cat." Gary held out his arm. "You see what he did to me? Hey, maybe that's what's happened. Could I have cat scratch fever? Is that a real thing?"

"If it was, I would have gotten sick a long time ago," Chuck said. "Your cat is not exactly the friendliest animal."

"Doesn't seem like anyone around here is very friendly to me." Gary looked at the front page picture of the train wreck. It was the same story he'd seen that morning. Come to think of it, it was a lot like the accident he'd seen from the cab. A shiver went up and down his spine. What had Miss Clark said about the wreck? _It's not your fault_.

"I don't get it. How is this newspaper supposed to make it all better?"

"It's not," Chuck told him. "You are. We are," he added at Gary's baffled look. "Check out the date."

"June thirteenth? Isn't that tomorrow?"

"He's catching on," Chuck told the windshield. "Try page four."

Gary did, but found nothing special. A couple ads, infighting among aldermen, a proposed rate hike for the CTA, and a traffic accident. "Pretty tame stuff, by Chicago standards."

Chuck sighed. "What's the worst thing you see there?"

"The ad for Mad Randy's House of Carpet and Sausages?"

"Gar, c'mon."

He took a closer look at the article about the accident. "Some kid on a scooter got hit by a car last night."

"No, get your head in the game. The date on the paper is what?"

"June thirteenth."

"And today is?"

Gary wasn't sure; he felt as though he'd lived at least a week in the past few days. "June twelfth?"

"Which is the day the kid gets hit. What time does the story say it happens?"

Gary scanned the article. "5:05."

"And what time is it now?"

"4:55."

"Exactly."

"Exactly what?"

Chuck pulled the car through a right-hand turn at a speed that might have worked for the BMW, but didn't sit nearly as well with a Taurus. "There was only one train wreck, and it happened today. You read about it this morning in this paper because you were supposed to stop it. You didn't, because obviously something's wrong in that thick head of yours. But the kid hasn't been hit yet."

"But this says it happened yesterday."

"Right, because when that paper comes out for the rest of the city early tomorrow, today will be yesterday."

Gary turned back to the front page. "Where did you get this?"

" _You_ get it."

"I really don't."

Chuck sighed. "Okay, Gar, one more time. Every day, you get the next day's paper. You read about what's going to happen, and you stop the bad things, or most of them."

"You're nuts."

"Would you look at that thing? You are holding tomorrow's paper. Check out the sports page."

Gary flipped the newspaper over. "'Cubs Win Ninth Inning Shocker?'" He traced the first few innings of the box score with a finger. "That's the game I was just watching."

"You know," Chuck said, "if we weren't trying to save a life, I'd pull over and bang my head against the steering wheel for a while. Seems like it would have the same effect as this conversation."

Gary flipped through the newspaper, page by page. "Where does it come from?"

"You got me. All I know is that it comes with your cat."

"That's not my cat."

"It's more like you're his human, if you want to know the truth."

"Okay, so, this story's going to show up in tomorrow's newspaper, which I'm holding, because a hit and run's going to happen—" He looked at the dashboard clock. "—now. You're bringing me to watch this kid get hit by a car? Isn't that kind of morbid?"

"It's not, because the story's not going to be in tomorrow's paper when everyone else gets it." Chuck pulled up alongside the curb under a no parking sign. "You are going to stop the accident from happening."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"With your incredible superpower of idiot bravery." Chuck took the newspaper from Gary and got out of the car. "Come on."

Baffled, Gary followed. Maybe Chuck hadn't set up all the other weird things that had happened, but this had to be a joke. "You really are nuts, you know that?" he said, easily catching up to Chuck's shorter stride. "Look around you. There's no kid, there's no car, there's no accident."

"There." Chuck pointed down the street. Right on cue, a boy wheeled out of a garage on a scooter.

"He's not in trouble," Gary started, but the boy swerved down his driveway and into the street. On the other end of the block, a sedan careened around the corner.

Chuck whacked him on the back. "Do your thing, Gar. Go!" 

Gary's ears rang as he looked from Chuck to the kid and back. This couldn't be real.

"Oh my God." Chuck thrust the newspaper at him. It bounced off his chest and fluttered to the ground as Chuck pelted into the street. He dodged around a parked car and dived toward the kid, pushing him off the scooter just before the car bumped over the scooter, mangling it in a screech of metal and tires, and paused for the briefest of moments before peeling away.

The sight of Chuck and the kid both sprawled in a driveway unfroze Gary. He hurried across the street. The boy got to his feet, cussing and yelping about his scooter, but Gary cut him off. "He just saved your life. Chuck, you okay?"

Chuck moaned and sat up, holding one side of his head.

"What were you thinking? You could have been killed!"

"You weren't about to do anything." Chuck pulled his hand away from his head, revealing a nasty bump, bright red on his temple. 

"You're going to have a bruise there."

"It'll go great with the one on my jaw." Chuck struggled to his feet. "Is the kid okay?"

The boy was already moping off down the street, cradling the ruined scooter. "Wear a helmet next time! And stay on the sidewalk!" Gary called after him. Jaden Millard, the article had said. The article had also said he'd end up in a coma. Whatever else was going on, Chuck had just prevented a tragedy. "You were amazing, buddy."

"It was supposed to be you." Chuck stalked across the street, Gary at his heels.

"What are you pissed about? You saved that kid's life."

" _You_ were supposed to save it," Chuck repeated. "Not me. This is what you do every day, Gar. It was bad enough when I had to chauffeur you from one end of the city to the other, but now you have a psychic fugue, and I have to do all the saving for you? This won't work. Get the paper," he finished, fumbling for his keys.

Gary snatched the keys from Chuck. "You shouldn't drive. Concussions are bad for that kind of thing."

"Almost as bad as amnesia," Chuck said, but he took the passenger seat while Gary gathered up the scattered pages from the sidewalk and got back in the car, shuffling through the wreck of the newspaper until he found page four. 

"It's not here," he said. Everything else on the page was the same, but the space where the article had been was now taken up by an even bigger ad for Mad Randy's place. "What happened to the story?"

"It didn't happen." Chuck slumped back against the seat. "No accident, no story. I told you, that's how it works."

"This thing is for real?"

"Oh my God, Eliza Doolittle, would you get it through your head? Yes, it's real."

Gary turned to the back sports page. "So the Cubs are really going to win?"

"Looks that way."

"Huh," Gary said. "Maybe this thing really is magic."

* * * * *

"Where did Fishman take him?" Crumb asked.

Marissa fingered the edge of her glass, trailing condensation around the rim. "On one of Gary's errands. The kind you don't want to know about." She stopped, retracing her path. "There's a chip in this glass. It's barely there, but we shouldn't use it for customers."

"Say no more." Crumb whisked the glass away. "You want something stronger?"

"It's tempting, but I'm having a hard enough time staying awake and focused as it is."

"Caffeine?" 

She shook her head. Crumb's idea of coffee was an industrial strength sludge that put her blood pressure in the stratosphere. "Once I get the chance, I want to be able to sleep." 

"Another club soda it is." A new glass clinked next to her hand, and she heard the soft _whoosh_ of his towel on the bar as he leaned in close. "Been kind of a rough one, huh?" 

She took a sip. She wanted to apologize for snapping at him when he'd called about finding Gary, but she'd tried that once already and been cut off. "I ought to apologize to you for bringing that wreck around here at all," he'd said. "Should have checked him into the psych ward."

So now she told him, "You don't have to work your shift. You found Gary. That's more than enough."

"I don't know about that. He still seems pretty lost."

"I mean it, Crumb." Even club soda was hard to get down, what with the lump in her throat. "I don't know what we'd do without you."

"Maybe I should ask for a raise, huh?"

"I'll talk to the owner about it," she said, but couldn't smile. "If he ever comes back to us. When are you leaving for Idaho?"

"Not until I know what's going on with Hobson. "

A cheer went up from the small crowd at the other end of the bar, startling her. "Are the Cubs making a comeback?"

"Anything can happen." She heard the squeak of a towel on glass as he went back to prepping the bar for the evening rush. "You know," he said, "I keep thinking of Mike Killibrew. You remember all that? He was a damn good cop, but he and his partner got ambushed. Killibrew made it out alive, but he was so eaten up with guilt about his partner that he decided he was some cowboy, Hopalong Cassidy or something."

"Bat Masterson," Marissa told him. "Gary was Wyatt Earp."

"Yeah, that was it. See, cops, we have to have walls to block out that kind of stuff, or the job eats us alive. Killibrew built his walls too high, got stuck behind them."

"And you think that's what happened to Gary?"

"Could be."

"But Gary hasn't been ambushed. As far as we know, the worst thing that happened yesterday was that he tripped on some stairs and smelled smoke in a deli." And had a conversation with her that had verged on an argument, but that wasn't what had changed him. It couldn't be. "How could that make him hit Chuck and want to be married to Marcia again?"

"Don't know." There was another long pause. "But he is wearing a wedding ring."

Marissa swallowed too fast, and soda tickled her nose. "What?"

"Swears he never took it off. His ex seems like a piece of work."

"I never really knew her. But Gary loved her, and he took the divorce hard. I thought he was finally over it, but he mentioned her yesterday at lunch, right before he left. I'm not sure if it means anything." Another, louder cheer from the baseball crowd cut her off. Which was fine; she wasn't sure what she'd meant to say. Crumb filled some drink orders, then came back.

"Whatever it is, you'll figure it out," he told her. "There's a reason that guy trusts you."

"He's acting like he barely knows me."

"He'll come around, kiddo."

"I hope you're right."

"Hey now, you know me better than that. I'm _always_ right. Uh-oh." His voice took on a warning edge as footsteps neared their end of the bar. "Look out, it's Cagney and Lacey. "

"Mission accomplished!" Chuck chirruped in her ear, and she jumped. "Hey, Crumb, give me a couple beers and another ice pack."

Crumb snorted. Marissa waited until she heard him move away to ask, "Did Gary save the boy?"

"I did. Got a knot on my head to show for it. Not that some people notice."

Marissa assumed that was directed at Crumb, who made a noncommittal noise and started glasses clinking a little way down the bar. Chuck followed him, still complaining. The strange, new smell of Gary, with that trace of women's perfume, wafted up as he leaned on the bar next to her.

"Gary?" she asked. "Why didn't you stop the accident?"

"Because I didn't, okay? I don't appreciate you people pushing me into stuff I'm not ready for. That I will never be ready for, especially after this day from hell." She heard ice clink in a glass, and he swallowed. "Marcia claims we're divorced. What did you tell her?"

She bristled at the accusation in his question, then told herself he was confused. She had to be patient, even if he wasn't making it easy. "Only that you wanted to see her. I got her here for you, but I can't make her believe you."

"You sure as hell didn't help."

"We're trying to do exactly that, Chuck and Crumb and I. If you'd only listen to us—"

"I listen to you, I end up divorced and running some broke-down bar."

She would have been less shocked if he'd pushed her off her chair. "Gary, what in the world happened to you?"

"You people happened to me." His glass clonked on the bar. "I live upstairs, right? I'm going to watch the end of the game." Before she could choke out a response, he was gone, the sound of his footsteps—dress shoes, not sneakers—fading into the bar noises.

"You got any aspirin?" Chuck moaned at her elbow. "These Chicago welcomes are a lot more painful than I remembered."

"Top drawer of my desk. Chuck? I think Gary just blew me off."

"Don't worry about it. He's definitely not thinking straight right now. He is _not_ ready to know about the paper. He froze out there. Went catatonic. If I hadn't jumped in, that kid would've been hamburger." He let out a sigh. "I'll keep an eye on him, don't worry. You look like you could use some sleep. Maybe you should go home."

"I slept—or didn't—on the couch in the office last night. I should stay tonight, too. What if he needs help?"

"I'll make sure he brushes his teeth and tuck him into bed at a decent hour," Chuck sing-songed. "That good enough for you?"

She hesitated. With Gary so closed off to her, how much help could she be? "Only if you sing him a lullaby. He likes 'Bye-Bye Blackbird.'"

"Hey, you made a joke."

"I did."

"But you're not smiling."

"Too tired."

"Here you go," Crumb said. Bottles clinked across the bar.

"Don't you worry," Chuck told them. "I've got it all under control."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Crumb and Marissa said together. 

Chuck went whistling off toward the office. "Hey, Marissa," Crumb said. "You know why they call them breakdowns, don't you? 'Cause the people who have them need a break."

"Is that what you think happened to Gary?"

"I don't know nothing." Crumb put a glass down on the bar with a force that made her jump. "I do not know what he does all day and I do not want to know. I'm just saying, if he were to need a break, and didn't think he should be taking a break, maybe his brain closed a couple doors, made him forget what he does. Like I said, he needs walls. Maybe he overdid them."

"Maybe." 

Crumb didn't say anything for a minute, waiting for more, but she was out of words. "My boss told me I could knock off early," he finally said. "Why don't I give you a ride home?"

Marissa bit her lip. She wanted to do some research about memory loss and stress and anything else that might possibly be wrong with Gary, but she could do that just as easily at home. It seemed she wasn't needed here. "Sure, Crumb. Thanks."

* * * * *

Gary drove back to the house in Lincoln Park because he didn't have anywhere else to go, but he took a roundabout route, following one-way streets and making random turns. He had enough to think about before he faced Marcia, and besides, the last time he'd driven a car this nice had been when Marcia's dad had let them use his Cadillac convertible on their wedding day.

Back then, this was what he'd dreamed of: a decent job, a fun car, a comfortable house in his favorite city, and Marcia right there with him, supporting him, his friend and his wife and—

That "and" right there had been a big part of the problem. He'd seen her as a mother; he'd seen himself as a father; he'd seen the both of them as parents, together. Not just a couple, but a family. He wondered if this version of G. and M. Hobson had ever had that talk. If they had, it had obviously gone Marcia's way. The job, the car, the house had been things he'd been interested in, sure, but they'd been things Marcia wanted with a passion. She'd seen this vision of her future and marched toward it unerringly, casting him aside when he hadn't kept up with her. Apparently the Gary who lived here had kept up, and had cast aside some things that he himself had held onto in order to march in time with her.

Things like his friendship with Chuck. Though it wasn't as if he had Chuck around back home these days either. They were still friends, of course, but Gary had missed the signs of Chuck's restlessness, his need to do more than run McGinty's and help out with the paper, until Chuck was two thousand miles away. Too bad there wasn't some kind of Nobel Prize for hindsight. He could have won it for his work figuring out why his relationships tanked after they were done.

Regret gave him another reason to keep driving through the long twilight. He put the top down and pushed buttons on the CD player until Springsteen came through. It was a beautiful summer night, the air cool and dry after yesterday's rain, but hardly anyone was out walking, biking, or jogging. Even in the residential neighborhoods he cruised through there weren't kids playing in the yards. In fact, the only other activity he saw were groups of younger guys hanging out around street lamps, following his car with sharp twists of their heads. One knot of about five started toward the BMW when he pulled up to a four-way stop. The looks they gave him reminded him of the guys who'd accosted him in the park the night before, and of what Tagliotti had said about crime in the city. He knew the paper could be choosy about what it showed him, but this felt like more. Like maybe the dam it represented against crime and chaos had developed a serious crack. 

Sirens sounded from a few blocks over. The kids took off and Gary gunned it through the intersection, put the top back up, and headed for a busier street. Even then, he didn't feel all that safe. There was something off, as if Chicago had developed a heart murmur.

This wasn't his home. The only thing that made a Chicago so dangerous and friendless make sense was that he'd fallen victim to a switcheroo right out of a science fiction movie. Of course, the only reason he could believe that was possible was because it wasn't nearly as strange as a paper that told the future and a cat that seemed to have nine very long lives. 

He wanted that world back, no matter how far it was from normal. He wanted Crumb, McGinty's, the paper, and even Cat. He wanted his friends, however far away they lived now. He wanted his Jeep, complete with the tire that kept losing air and the gear shift that got stuck in second. The one thing here that seemed better than it was at home was Marcia, but how could they still be married? 

He had to tell her. He couldn't go on letting her think he was some other guy. Some guy she loved, some guy who kissed up to Pritchard, some guy who no longer hung out with Chuck, some guy who'd stood by and done nothing when something nasty had happened to Marissa. 

He had to face that, too; had to get Marissa to talk to him and believe him, much as she didn't seem likely to do that. Not that he blamed her. If this really was a parallel universe, where was the paper that belonged here, and why hadn't it protected her?

He parked the BMW in the alley behind the house next to the Lexus Marcia had driven that afternoon. Having two off-street parking spaces in this part of Chicago was a sign of more money than he'd ever dreamed of earning. Marcia met him at the door, relieved, beautiful, and offering him a night cap. Gary forced a smile and took a deep breath as he stepped inside to spend the night with a woman who was some other Gary Hobson's wife.

* * * * *

"They won." Gary looked from the newspaper on the coffee table to the television, to Chuck, and back to the newspaper again. "They won on a sacrifice bunt and an infield double."

"Pretty much." Chuck flopped back onto the couch. "Go Cubbies."

"It's not that they won." Gary waved the newspaper in Chuck's direction. "It's that they won _exactly_ the way this thing says they would. Will. Did?"

"Don't think too hard about the verb tenses. It'll just mess you up. More."

Too overwhelmed to sit still, Gary paced the loft. "And this magic newspaper is going to come again tomorrow?"

"Bright and early." Chuck kicked his feet up on the coffee table. "So what do you think of your place?"

"It's kind of small. At least it's...comfortable." And weirdly familiar. From the pinball machine to the bookcases that looked like the steel skeletons of Chicago skyscrapers, the loft was a slightly better funded version of the studio he'd lived in before he'd married Marcia. It was a relic of the life he could have lived if he'd never had her to point him in a better direction.

Or if she'd kicked him out on their anniversary without a word of warning. She couldn't have; she always talked to him, even when he didn't want to hear what she had to say.

God, he missed her. Ached for her, and wanted to know which one of them was remembering their life together wrong. He stopped short at the bookcase nearest the window, arrested by the sight of a model boat that sat perched on one of the shelves. "This is the _Meridian_." Chuck shrugged, unimpressed.

If the _Meridian_ was here, it meant Gary really didn't live with Marcia. That boat was the only thing they'd brought back from their honeymoon. Okay, maybe not the only thing, but the sunburns had faded. Marcia wouldn't let the _Meridian_ go unless the honeymoon, the marriage, didn't matter to her anymore. 

He pressed his forehead against the window and stared out at the dusky skyline. All over the city, lights were coming on. And all over the city, bad things were happening like they always did at night. People got robbed, stabbed, and murdered. There were fires and explosions and suicides and kids on scooters who didn't watch out for cars. Did these people expect him to fix all that?

"Remember the last time we went to a Cubs game?" Chuck asked, a little too casually.

"No."

"Me neither. You remember the first one?"

Gary turned from the window. Chuck held the beer bottle halfway to his mouth, and his attention seemed to be fixed on the postgame show. 

"Actually, I do. My grandpa took us. We were, what, eleven?"

Chuck nodded. "Summer after fifth grade. We played—"

"The Reds," Gary filled in. "Burris pitched."

"Final score?"

"What is this, a test?"

Chuck shrugged again and took a swig of beer.

"Nine-seven." Gary picked at the corner of the label on his own bottle. That memory had been his standard for the perfect summer day for more than twenty years. "We sat on the third base line and ate nine hot dogs between us. Grandpa kept griping that he'd have to clean puke out of the back of the Buick if we didn't slow down."

"Yeah." Chuck finally tore his attention from the television. "That's right. How come you can remember that, but not any of this?" He swept his bottle in an arc that started at the newspaper and took in the whole loft.

"I don't want to remember this," Gary said, thinking of Marcia looking at him with that strange mixture of pity and baffled disgust. He fingered the _Meridian_ ''s main sail. The whole thing toppled over. "I want to go home." Relieved as he was to have Chuck talking to him again, he needed Marcia, the real Marcia, to wake him up and tell him this was nothing but a dream.

"You are home," Chuck said while Gary reset the model ship. "The sooner you stop hitting your friends and start dealing with that fact, the better off we'll all be." He gave his head a rueful shake. "I always knew you were heading for a break with reality. Never thought you'd take the rest of us with you."

He hadn't taken any of these people with him. Hell, Chuck was the only one he recognized. Except he didn't recognize Chuck, not this version of him. And this loft, as comfortable as it looked, wasn't home. It couldn't be home. At home, the _Meridian_ had its own glass case in the office he shared with Marcia. "Like I said, I'm sorry. I thought you made all this happen. Guess I was wrong."

Chuck snorted. "I know better than to mess with Chicago's oldest Boy Scout." He nodded toward the door. "You know what the pair of them would do to me if I did?"

"The cop?"

"And Marissa, yeah."

A memory tickled the back of Gary's brain. Something about the woman who sat at the front desk and greeted him every morning, something he was supposed to do or hadn't done. "Why are you worried about her?" he asked. Chuck had never been her friend, not that he'd known about.

Chuck's gaze narrowed. "The question is, why aren't you?"

"Why should I be? I've hardly ever spoken to her. At least I remember being friends with you, once upon a time."

"At this point, Gar, she may know you, or at least who you are now, better than I do. I hate to admit it, but there it is. You're going to have to talk to her at some point." He finished off his beer and opened a new one.

Talking to Miss Clark, accepting that she was more than just a receptionist, would mean that this—all of this, including a newspaper that told the future and the end of everything with Marcia—was real. Like the boat. He wasn't ready for that yet, but he probably shouldn't say so to Chuck. "She tried to touch my face," he said instead. "What was that all about?"

"Tried?"

"I didn't let her."

Chuck looked at him for a long, long moment. "No, I guess you wouldn't. Word of advice," he went on, pointing the neck of his beer bottle at Gary, "don't tell her she can't do anything. She'll take your head off like a preying mantis. And don't say you're sorry. About anything. _Act_ sorry, make it up to her, but don't say it."

"Why not?"

"The vagaries of women, my friend." He frowned down at his beer bottle. "Talk to her tomorrow, okay? 'Cause if you do have amnesia, you're not going to be real happy with yourself when you remember." He shifted on the couch and picked up the remote. "You want to watch the Sox, make it a double header?"

Among the many things Gary couldn't remember was the last time he'd watched two baseball games in a single day, let alone with Chuck. He settled down on the other end of the couch, kicked off his shoes, and put his feet up on the table. If there was no way out of this hallucination, he might as well enjoy it.

"You bet."

* * * * *


	12. Chapter 12

_They have the time, the time of their lives_  
_I saw a man, he danced with his wife_  
_In Chicago, hometown_  
_~Marc D. Shermer_

 

* * *

As soon as Gary took the drink she offered, Marcia kissed him again. He didn't let himself respond; instead, he turned his head so it landed on his cheek. She blinked at him, but didn't say anything as she pulled him into the kitchen, where a chocolate cheesecake and an apple pie sat on the table. "My client runs a bakery, and I got him cleared of health code violations. They were completely bogus," she added with a laugh at Gary's sidelong look at the cheesecake. She put slices of both desserts on their plates and filled crystal glasses with some wine he could neither pronounce nor appreciate, all the while chatting about her day: the trial, the arguments, her history with the client. Even though he knew she was doing it for his sake, trying to reset his place in her world, Gary only half-listened. He was too busy continuing the discussion he'd been having with himself about how much to tell her.

Then she started in, more cautiously, on his day. "So how did things go with Phil and your investors? Having dinner with clients seems like a good sign." 

"You know, I really don't want to talk about investors and clients tonight," he finally said when she came to a stopping point and stuck a forkful of cheesecake in her mouth.

She gaped at him as if he'd grown an extra nose. "But you like talking about your investors. You always say it's the people you help who make the job worthwhile."

As far as he could remember, he'd never had many investors to help in the first place. Pritchard hadn't trusted him with individual clients. Hiding his confusion in a bite of apple pie—flaky crust, tender apples, just the right amount of cinnamon—only gave her an opening for more questions.

"Did you call about getting your driver's license replaced?" When he shook his head, she added, "So I don't suppose you had time to call the electrician about the short in the guest bathroom, either?"

"Sorry. I got to work late, and I was preoccupied trying to catch up."

"It's okay." Her smile was a little forced. It was an expression he remembered, along with the hit of guilt that he hadn't lived up to her expectations. "I figured you'd forget after everything that happened. Whatever that everything was." She waited, but he shoveled another forkful of pie into his mouth. "But we do have to get hold of them about the wiring problem, since they were the ones who caused it in the first place. You're so good at bringing them into line."

Now that, he knew, was not the way his marriage had worked. It was Marcia who'd dealt with reluctant electricians and plumbers, shoddy car repairs, even returning his clothes when they didn't fit. Gary not only hated that kind of thing, he stunk at it. It was why he'd left a few too many problems at McGinty's unsolved. "You're too sweet," she'd always told him. "Let the shark lawyer deal with it."

But maybe the guy who was supposed to be here didn't stink at it. If he could get in Pritchard's good graces, he must be capable of just about anything, including taking care of some of the more annoying tasks of running a home and a shared life. Maybe not having to do all those things made this Marcia a little softer and more open than the woman his own wife had become over the last couple years of their marriage. Maybe if he'd been a little more assertive, they could have made it work. 

They'd tried counseling once. Marcia's idea. The counselor had suggested they write down their visions for the marriage. "Tell me where you see yourselves in five, ten, and fifteen years," he'd said. Marcia had scribbled frantically, pages and pages of writing too tiny to read from the other end of the couch. Some part of him must have known that if he'd put down what he really wanted, he'd set Marcia off, so he'd gone with jokey responses: at a dinner party, driving a bus, in Venice. After Marcia had read off her list of career and real estate goals for the both of them, the counselor had asked, "What about you, Gary? You want to have half a dozen kids and move out to the suburbs?"

"Oh, yeah," he'd said, forcing a laugh to show he got the joke. To show _her_ he was joking, that he didn't really want any of that. "Three boys, three girls. Lined up like stair steps. A house with a big yard. We'll start our own baseball team."

He didn't remember what the counselor had said, but Marcia had known he'd meant every word. He'd tried a smile and she'd responded with one of her own, but it hadn't deepened. Her gaze had skimmed his face and left him feeling hollow. That look would echo around his chest long after she'd ripped out his heart.

Where would he be now if she'd wanted the same thing, he wondered, barely aware of the clinking sound his fork was making on his empty plate. Where would the paper be, and—

Marcia covered his hand with hers, and the clinking stopped. "What is it?" 

He stared down at their hands, feeling the softness of hers, but remembering the way Marissa's had shook as she pulled it out of his reach. He searched for the right words for Marcia. For _this_ Marcia.

"It feels like something's shifted. Like suddenly everything makes a different kind of sense than it ever has before." There was a weird tingle at the back of his neck, not quite déjà-vu, but close. This conversation had never happened before, but maybe it should have, something like two years ago. If it had, though, he probably would have gotten an even stranger look from his wife. Marcia pulled her hand away and stared hard, and there was the lawyer side, back in full force. "I'm not crazy," he told her.

"Of course you're not," she said, again with the tight smile. "Honey, what's going on?"

She hadn't called him that in years, not since long before their marriage ended. Toward the end, even his name had sounded poisonous coming out of her mouth. He hadn't thought hard enough about what that had meant until it was too late. He'd been too busy trying to drag the marriage back to square one, to the honeymoon romance of its first year, to realize some changes were irreversible. Or at least, that's what he'd thought until today.

"Gary?" His name was a question, loaded with warmth and concern. But they weren't his to accept.

He reached into his pocket and fingered the piece of McGinty's brick. For him, it was a promise that the place was real, but for the other guy, it must have been loaded with regret. What was he supposed to tell that guy's wife? _I'm not your husband, and I'm not sure I should be here. I don't want that job. The guy you think you're talking to might be good at it, but I'm not. Where the hell is the paper that tells me what's going to happen tomorrow?_

But because she was logical, practical, black-and-white Marcia, he could never say any of that. Her brilliant mind wasn't wired to deal with something like the paper, because its brilliance was so very legal. This Marcia was a little different than the one he'd known, and obviously her relationship was in a different place, but he wasn't sure how far those differences went.

He started over again. "I've been kind of stressed out. Worried that I'd screwed things up at work yesterday. And if I had, if I lost my job, what would that do to us?"

"I know you worry about the mortgage and the car payments, but we could make it work until you found something else."

"No, I mean to _us_." 

Marcia's face clouded over. "'Us' is not about money. It never has been, not even when we fight about it. And even when we do fight, it doesn't mean we're not good together. It's just how I interact with everyone. Part of the training. You get that, right?"

He gulped, swallowing a thousand things he could have told her. "Right."

"That's why we work together," she said as she slid the cheesecake back into its box. "We know each other so well, and we both want the same things."

It wasn't like Marcia to deny the truth behind their arguments. Their relationship hadn't worked. Or at least he hadn't worked in it. Two years ago, she'd been the one to see that. But for all he knew, this relationship did work. Far be it from him to break it before he knew if he was stuck in this place for good.

He helped her clear the dishes, and they settled in on the couch to watch _The African Queen_ on AMC, another thing the Marcia he remembered hadn't had time for in years. She would have disappeared into the home office to work on briefs. But this Marcia snuggled up against his shoulder and fit there, just like she had in college. 

"You know," she said carefully as the credits rolled, "Karen Henderson has a fantastic psychiatric practice. I could make a call and get you an appointment. She usually has a seven-month waiting list, but I helped her out in a malpractice case once. I'm sure she'd see you."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea."

"There's no shame in it." She reached up and twisted a couple fingers through his hair. "Most of the people I know are in therapy."

"Maybe." Even if he ended up stuck here, he wasn't going to talk to someone he didn't know. Marissa could do all the head-shrinking he needed, if she'd ever speak to him again. Crumb always said that psychiatrists were only in the field because they were nuts themselves. He opened his mouth to describe the look on Marissa's face when Crumb had said that, but snapped it shut when all the air went out of his lungs. Marcia didn't know Marissa, didn't know Crumb. He was getting far too comfortable here.

He had to get back where he belonged, and he had to fix this place, or at least fix the paper in this place, so good cops didn't blow up and Marissa wasn't flinching around him. But if he fixed those things, what else would change? And would it bring him any closer to home?

Marcia pulled away and craned her neck, staring at him with a bemused frown. "It's just a thought."

"No, it's a good one. I could use some help, that's for sure. It's just—I was thinking I might need to kind of jump start the whole process." He nodded at the screen, as if Bogey and Hepburn were still cruising down the river. "Go upstream to find the source of my stress," he said, and couldn't help a wry grin. 

Marcia sat up straight. "What do you mean?"

"I think I need a couple days away from the job and the city. I could take a fishing trip down to my dad's old cabin in Indiana. Just for a couple days, to get my head on straight."

Her nose wrinkled, and Gary gulped. He loved it when her nose wrinkled. "Fishing? You haven't been fishing since before we got married. And with your dad?"

"No!" Dad would probably accept any crackpot story Gary told him, which was the whole problem; he'd accept it and run with it, right into even more trouble. "Alone. I have a key, and there's gear down there at the cabin. The point isn't fishing, anyway. It's getting time to think."

"What about work?"

"I've earned some time off," he guessed.

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"You hate it down there," he guessed again. "All the mud and weeds. And the worms. Not to mention the plaid curtains."

She punched his chest playfully. "I'd go with you, though, if you wanted."

"I know you would. But I think it's better if I do this myself." Without her touching him. Without the temptation to respond. "It's just fishing and thinking. No big deal." And he would go fishing, though not in Indiana, and not for fish. 

Before she went up to bed, she handed him three hundred dollars cash. "Since your cards aren't working. You'll need it for gas." Her lips curved into a tempting, wry smile. "And bait." 

Gary didn't quite know what to do. He didn't want to take someone else's money, but it seemed like this couple had cash to spare, and he had no idea how long he'd be stuck in their world. He was so busy trying to figure out if he should take it that she caught him by surprise when she slipped the money into his pocket, moved her hand on the back of his neck, and pulled him in for a kiss, warm and soft and God, he'd missed this. He'd liked kissing Marcia. He'd been damned good at kissing Marcia. Among other things. But if this wasn't his house, wasn't his life, then this wasn't that Marcia, and he had no business kissing her, no matter how good he was at it. No matter how it made him feel.

"Thanks," he gasped, pulling away before he lost himself completely. It felt more wrong than the money, kissing her like that. "I'll come up after the news."

A tiny line appeared at the bridge of her nose, the same one that used to show up if he even mentioned someone else's kids, but she gave his arm a squeeze and nodded. "Good-night, Gary."

"Yeah, good-night."

He didn't go up after the news. He couldn't. Cuddling on the couch and a kiss he hadn't initiated were strange enough. Body memory, sense memory, whatever it was that made it seem as though he and Marcia belonged together was too powerful, and could lull him into doing something he'd probably regret later. 

Probably.

As quietly as he could, he explored the two lower levels of the house. The first floor was made up of the kitchen and the living room, while the second floor had a small guest suite and a double office, along with the cozy sitting room where they'd watched television earlier. The office had walnut bookcases and desks with leather chairs. Classic lawyer style, Marcia used to call it. The fireplace was nice, but it was gas rather than real, and the leather was green. Still, the _Meridian_ sat atop the mantle, ensconced in a glass and wood case that probably cost as much as any piece of furniture back home in his loft. 

Between this house and the office at Strauss, he wondered if the other Gary Hobson had very different taste from his, or if he'd just let everyone else around him force their tastes on him. He tried not to think too hard about where the other guy had gone, or what he was doing right about now.

The desk he decided was his was neat, if a little dusty. Last Sunday's _New York Times_ and a copy of _The Wall Street Journal_ sat at one corner, carefully re-folded though they'd obviously been read. In the top drawer there was an address book, but the only contacts that didn't have notes about business and investments were Chuck, his parents and in-laws, and a handful of distant cousins. Outside of work and Marcia, it appeared this guy didn't have any life at all. 

Of course, this guy seemed to be better at both work and Marcia than Gary had ever been. Not that he couldn't learn, but what would happen to the paper if he did?

The bookcases held mostly law books and a few college texts. On a low shelf, hidden from casual view behind one of the desks, was a collection of dog-eared paperbacks. Mostly bestsellers like Tom Clancy and Stephen King, plus a few of the Cowboy Sam readers he'd had as a kid. He reached for one, hoping the familiarity of something he'd had since he was old enough to read would ground him and help him think his way out of this mess. He pulled out the book, and the whole row toppled forward, revealing a copy of _Lost Chicago_ tucked behind.

After a moment's hesitation in which he waited for Cat to jump up on the desk, Gary pulled it out and dropped into the chair. Like the book back home in his loft, it contained photos of vanished buildings and landmarks, and a picture of Lucius Snow practicing the lost art of typesetting while his cat stood sentry. He turned a few pages and stopped dead. Though he'd never paid much attention to the rest of the book, he was pretty sure his copy didn't have an entry for McGinty's.

The photo showed the bar as it had been before Gary owned it, a little run down but comfortable. The caption told the story of the building's history as a fire station, then a speakeasy, and finally, before it was torn down to make way for a parking garage, a neighborhood watering hole.

As much as the end of the story turned his stomach, it was a long time before Gary could page back to Lucius Snow. "Where are you?" he asked the Cat in the photo, who seemed to be looking right at him. It wasn't the paper, but it was a message nonetheless. He just wasn't sure what it meant. "Look, if you put me here to show me this, I get it, and I'm ready to go home. And if there's some other reason I'm here, I need to know what it is." He waited, hoping for a response, but all he got was the ticking of the mantle clock.

Despite his confusion and frustration, a yawn nearly split his face. He went up to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, watching Marcia sleep. Her half-open mouth and her faint snores, which she'd always denied, told him she didn't even know he was there, let alone suspect he wasn't her real husband. Part of him yearned to lie down next to her. He knew how it would feel, how she'd hook a leg over his in her sleep and shift closer to him. If they woke up early enough, she'd turn to him, her hair sleep-tousled, her face open and trusting, and trail her hand down his chest, over his hip, and he'd—

He stood up. He couldn't do it. If he did lie down next to Marcia, he might never get up again. Okay, he would, but he would lose the determination he had right now to figure out what was going on. He would slip into this life, and there was no way that was right. _Lost Chicago_ was proof of that. So were Chuck and Marissa. And Crumb.

Marcia didn't wake while Gary rummaged around in the closet until he found a duffle bag and some clothes that were more appropriate for fishing, or running around Chicago saving lives, than for working in an office. He added a toothbrush, razor, deodorant, and a bottle of aspirin. He felt another wave of guilt about taking stuff that technically didn't belong to him, but figured that not sleeping with Marcia despite the temptation balanced that out.

He went back down to the second floor, flopped onto the bed in the guest suite, and set the alarm on his watch for, as Crumb always called it, oh-God-thirty. At least he could be relatively sure he wouldn't wake up to a knife at his throat tomorrow. It wasn't much of a step forward, but it was better than nothing.

* * * * *


	13. Chapter 13

_If you are afraid, give more_  
 _If you are alive, give more_  
 _Everybody here has seams and scars_  
 _So what? Level up_  
_~Shih Cynthia Yih_

 

* * *

 

"Rise and shine, big guy!"

Without opening his eyes, Gary reached out to still the hand that was shaking him awake. Him, and all the aches and pains the beer had numbed the night before. "What time is it, hon?"

"It's after seven, sweetums." 

Gary sat up, trying to get his bearings. "What hairy arms you have," he muttered, blinking as Chuck's face unblurred in his vision. 

"The better to haul your ass out of bed. C'mon."

He rubbed his face. "What's the rush? And do I smell bacon?" It was too faint a promise to be cooking in the tiny loft.

"Marissa's got breakfast going in the kitchen. It was all I could do to keep her out of your hair once she realized the paper was here. I fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is, 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well-known is, 'Never get into a verbal sparring match with Marissa before you've had coffee.'"

Gary blinked at him.

"Nothing?" Chuck shook his head. "Shouldn't be surprised. You never did get my _Princess Bride_ references. Anyway, she says you're not getting coffee or breakfast unless you read the paper."

"The newspaper?" The previous day came back to Gary with a sickening rush, and he flopped onto the pillows. "Not again."

Chuck slapped a copy of the _Sun-Times_ on his chest. "Read it and weep. The first thing we have to take care of is at eight-thirty."

The cat jumped onto his chest. Gary pushed it to the floor and it let out a yowl. "This isn't my gig."

"What else you gonna do, go moon on Marcia's doorstep and try to get her to take you back?"

"I was thinking about it, yeah."

"Her latest fling would probably trip over you on his way out the door."

Gary sat up. "You're joking."

"Sorta. I haven't exactly been keeping track of her love life since she dumped Pritchard. C'mon, get up." Chuck stuck his head into the wardrobe. "Shower. Shave." A pair of jeans landed on the bed, followed by a shirt that looked like it belonged to a lumberjack. "Put on the drop-dead gorgeous plaid that made L.L. Bean famous."

"No way am I wearing that. It looks like the curtains in my dad's fishing shack." Gary threw the shirt back at Chuck—it dropped on the floor when Chuck jumped back—and pulled the newspaper out from under the jeans. It looked like a normal edition of the _Sun-Times_ , but the date at the top was off by one day. Again.

"Who exactly sends this thing?"

Chuck shrugged. "Got me. Marissa thinks it's God. I try not to think about it, unless I've had a lot more to drink than I did last night." He opened the loft door, and the scent of bacon grew stronger. "Get showered and meet me in the office downstairs."

"Save me some coffee?"

"It's a restaurant, Gar. We have plenty."

Gary dug around the wardrobe until he found a light grey oxford and wondered what the hell had happened to his sense of style. This all looked like the stuff he'd worn in college.

Marcia had happened. She'd bought him nice shirts and ties and suits, and he'd gradually grown comfortable in them, until he'd hardly even noticed when she gave his old stuff away. But last night Marcia hadn't seemed like the type to even ask about giving away his old clothes. She'd do it, and expect him to like it. 

The cat jumped onto the bed, sniffing at the jeans before settling onto the newspaper and starting with the staring again.

"I'm going to take a shower. Don't make a mess this time."

The cat seemed content to stay on the bed while Gary got ready, fumbling around in a bathroom that was half the size he was used to with the cheap soap and towels, the off-brand deodorant and razor that were supposed to be his. The people here thought he had some kind of weird, selective amnesia, but did amnesia extend to odors? Nothing he was using, not the Irish Spring nor the Barbasol, smelled like the mornings he was used to.

He could barely remember what he was supposed to smell like, and these people expected him to deal with a freakish magical newspaper?

A freakish magical newspaper and a cat who pinned him with its creepy stare the minute he emerged from the bathroom, pulling at the waistband on the jeans to get them buttoned. The jeans were just tight enough to make him count back the days since he'd last used his gym membership. A week at least. "Yeah, yeah, I don't want another scratch. Amscray," he muttered. When he tugged at a corner of the newspaper, the cat finally jumped off the bed.

Still avoiding reading even the headlines, Gary made his way down to the tiny office. Chuck perched atop one of the desks, mug in one hand and a bagel in the other, while Miss Clark listened to something on her computer through headphones. "Where's the coffee?"

Chuck waved the bagel at one of the doors. Gary dropped the newspaper on the desk behind him and went through the door into a neat stainless steel kitchen, where a big pot of coffee was already half-empty. On the counter next to it sat plates of fruit, bagels, and the bacon he'd sniffed out earlier. He filled a McGinty's mug with coffee, put some food on his plate, and stopped at the office door. Miss Clark had removed her headphones and was listening to Chuck, who didn't see Gary as he paged through the newspaper. "I'd forgotten what it's like. Lucky he has me today."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Miss Clark said. "I should go with you."

"Don't you have to stay and run this place?"

"I'm always running this place." She slumped back in her chair with a frustrated huff. "The bar survived you, it'll get along on its own."

"You guys really had a fight before he took off?" Chuck jumped off the desk and opened a file cabinet drawer. "'Cause if you did, maybe you shouldn't be hanging around him right now. Hate to see you take one to the jaw."

"Gary wouldn't hit me."

"I thought he wouldn't hit me, until he did."

"He wouldn't hit me, and we didn't have a fight. We just didn't agree on priorities. It happens all the time. More so since you left because he's under so much more stress."

"He doesn't want you looking over his shoulder," Chuck said, still pawing through the drawer. "So to speak. You'll just make him more self-conscious about the whole thing."

"The most important thing right now is the paper, and all the people in it who need help. If Gary won't take care of it, people could get hurt or even die. And whatever happened to Gary, when he comes back to himself and remembers, he'll never forgive us, or himself, if the stories in the paper aren't fixed."

Was Gary really that hard on himself? Why would he want to go back to being that person? Before his befuddled brain could serve up an answer he didn't like, he cleared his throat. Chuck shot an eye-roll at him. "We'll be fine, Marissa. Right, Gar? You don't remember where you put the map, do you? There has to be one. You go from one end of the city to the other on a weekly basis."

"I mostly stick to downtown and Lincoln Park," Gary said. He slipped past Chuck and sat at the desk opposite Miss Clark's. 

"I don't know that there is a map," she said. "You seem to have memorized a lot of Chicago since the paper started coming."

"I get lost south of the Loop and west of the Kennedy." The bacon and coffee seemed like the surest things in this sea of surrealism, so he started in on those. "What did you find out about my credit cards?" he asked between bites.

Her lips drew together in a disappointed grimace; he'd said the wrong thing again. "I'm looking into it. Gave up after being on hold with American Express for twenty minutes."

"Why do you need a map?" he asked Chuck.

" _We_ need a map, unless you know River Grove well enough to find Leyden Avenue."

Gary swallowed a mouthful of bacon. "I've only been out there once, for some gallery opening."

Chuck raised an eyebrow. "Marcia?"

"Oh, yeah." It would be a networking opportunity, she'd said; a chance to meet potential investors and clients. Mostly, it had made Gary feel about as out of place as a polar bear in Jamaica; the investors had been more interested in paintings he didn't understand than in stocks. "It was all champagne and canapés and post-post-modern abstract impressionism." Nobody'd wanted to talk about the market, that was for sure.

"I didn't know you even knew that word."

"What, post-post modern?"

"Canapés." Chuck gave up on his search and flopped onto the couch, nudging aside the guide dog, who let out a warning growl. "No wonder our catering business didn't last."

"Of course it had nothing to do with your management style," Miss Clark said drily.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She pointed toward the filing cabinets, opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. Hung up the phone. "Never mind. Let's just deal with the paper."

Chuck rolled his eyes. Gary almost told him not to, but then thought, why should he? It wasn't as if she could see them. He popped a grape into his mouth, and Chuck's jaw dropped. "Gar?"

"What?"

"You're eating grapes."

"So?"

"You hate grapes. Ever since you choked on one in the cafeteria in eighth grade and Mr. Hansen the gym teacher had to give you the Heimlich and you spat it into Cassie Lynch's chocolate milk. She never forgave you, and you never touched another grape. You won't even drink grape juice. You barely do wine."

"That wasn't me."

"I know you don't remember, but—"

"Oh, I remember." It had been one of the funniest moments of junior high. "It wasn't me. It was Joe Bosanek, remember? We called him The Flying Grape the rest of the year."

"That was you." Chuck leaned forward and rapped Gary on the head. "What scrambled your eggs, buddy?"

Gary brushed Chuck's hand away. "I'm telling you, the neurologist didn't find any head trauma. At least that's what Crumb said."

"Maybe he took you to the wrong kind of doctor," Miss Clark said. She folded her hands on her desk, all prim and proper, and tilted her head quizzically. "Are you sure nothing happened the day before yesterday? Nothing frightening or traumatic?"

"What am I, a kitten? I'm telling you, I drove to work at Strauss, where _you_ handed me my mail, I worked clients until lunch, went to a lecture, came back to the office, and everything had changed."

"You went to a lecture?" Chuck asked. Gary couldn't remember if he had mentioned that the day before or not.

"Yeah, at that new business college the U of Chicago built over by the river. The Gleacher Center."

Miss Clark nodded. "When you left here, that's where you said you were going. The paper said there would be a disturbance where someone got hurt, and you went to stop it. Crumb and I went over there that evening when we were looking for you."

"I'm telling you, I didn't leave from here." Gary waved an arm at the room around them. "There was no _here_ here. I started the day at my house over in Lincoln Park." 

Chuck jumped up and arrested his arm in mid-wave. "Gar. Gary. Gar."

"What?" Gary tried to pull his arm away, but Chuck had hold of his left wrist and gave it a shake. 

"That is your wedding ring. You haven't worn that in a year. Why are you wearing it now?"

"Because I'm still married."

"Were you here when Marcia showed up yesterday?"

"You know I was."

"Because no matter what you think, the way that bi—"

"Chuck!" Miss Clark snapped. 

Chuck dropped Gary's arm. "I'm telling you, Marissa, you didn't see the way she was looking at him. She treated him like a mentally deficient loser."

Miss Clark held up a hand. "I can just about guess. But for now, let's—" She swallowed, and Gary wondered if she'd been about to tell Chuck that they should let him have his delusions. Instead she said, "Let's deal with the problems in the newspaper. There's something early, isn't there?"

"Car accident on the South Side sends a pregnant woman to the hospital in forty minutes. Then the marching band thing in Chicago Heights, the tollbooth robbery on the Skyway, the kid in the pool in River Grove, and a food fight at the Dominick's in Oak Park." Gary felt his mood sink with every item Chuck ticked off on his fingers. "What's the deal with all the kids?" 

"Summer vacation," Miss Clark said. "They have more time to get in trouble."

Chuck threw a strawberry into the air and caught it in his mouth. "That's why I voted for year-round school."

"How're we going to get all over town like that in one day?" Gary asked. The coffee he'd downed was doing nothing to stop the flapping wings of panic in his chest.

"Time management. Also, I'm an excellent driver," Chuck told him. Miss Clark snorted. "Oh, like you could do better, Danica Patrick? I've been training on the mean streets of southern California for a couple months. I can handle Chicago. All we need is a map."

Gary stood and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think I'm cut out for this."

"Of course you are." Miss Clark turned an encouraging smile on him, the kind that probably worked on kindergarteners. "That's why the paper comes to you."

"Not to worry," Chuck nudged Gary's chair away from the desk and rifled through the drawers. "You're a pro at this, trust me. It'll all come back to you."

"How do you guys know?"

"Because we know you," Miss Clark said, "even if you don't remember me."

"Why should I? It's not like we usually say anything more than 'good morning' and 'thanks for the mail.'"

"That isn't true." Though her frown was directed at him, it landed somewhere in the vicinity of his left shoulder. "Even when we both worked at Strauss, that wasn't true."

"Look, nothing personal, but when would I have time to talk to you?"

"Hey, guys, found a map!" Chuck waved it between Gary and Miss Clark, but Gary saw the way she blinked fast and turned her head away.

"You came to my grandmother's funeral," she said. "We were friends before the paper showed up."

"I'm sorry," he started, but Chuck had been right about those words. She flinched. He'd blown it again. "I don't even remember the last time I set foot in a church."

"Three weeks ago." Clutching the arms of her chair, Miss Clark gave a firm nod. "St. Patrick's. You pushed Father Cleary out of the way when one of the darlings in the children's choir dropped a bible from the loft."

"I would remember that."

"Not if you have amnesia," Chuck put in. "Remember Jamie Sommers?"

"Who?"

"The Bionic Woman! She had that sky diving accident and they had to make her bionic, which was cool, but she forget her whole life before her bionification. Oh! And then there was the end of _Full House,_ where poor little Michelle fell off her horse and they had to remind her of her whole life." Chuck lit up with a feral grin. "Gary, you're Michelle Tanner!"

"Who?"

Chuck got a faraway look on his face, one that meant he was planning something that wouldn't end well for anyone but Chuck. "I wonder if I can get the Olsen twins to play you in the movie."

Gary turned back to the receptionist, who had rolled her chair a little bit away from them. "What the hell is he talking about?"

"I have no idea. The point is, the paper needs you, those people need you, and you can do this."

Gary looked from her to Chuck, who rolled his eyes again.

"Cut it out," she told Chuck. "I really think I should come with you."

Gary quickly shook his head, and Chuck said, "Nah, we'll be okay." He picked up the _Sun-Times_ and the map and started for the door. "I told you, Marissa, I am in control." He gave Gary a little shove. "Let's go."

"Call me if you need help," Miss Clark said. "You'll be okay, Gary. Once you remember the paper, you'll remember how good you are at it."

Remember it? Hell, Gary just hoped he could survive it.

* * * * *

Gary got up early and waited, but six-thirty came and went without the paper or Cat. When he heard Marcia in the bathroom upstairs, he found a notepad and pencil and left a note on the kitchen counter: "Gone fishing. Back in a couple days." He started out the back door, then came back and added, "Love you, G." It would put her mind at ease, and it wasn't exactly a lie. He had loved a version of Marcia once upon a time. If this Marcia had been his, he might still have felt the same way.

He took the BMW, figuring Marcia would wonder if he left it. Before he'd gotten far, though, he realized the problem with leaving the house so early was that unless he actually was going fishing or stopping some pre-rush hour accident, there weren't many places to go. 

He parked in the same valet garage where he'd found the car the day before, then walked until he found a diner, a real diner that didn't have pretensions of being a coffee house, a bistro, or a café. The tired-looking waitress brought him coffee in a chipped Scooby Doo mug. He ordered fried eggs and hash browns, which had always been his favorite pre-fishing breakfast, but the truth was, he needed the coffee more. He'd hardly slept the night before, trying to figure out what was going on and wondering whether Marcia was awake and missing him up in the master bedroom.

"Velma or Daphne?" the waitress asked as she refilled his mug. Gary blinked up at her. She was young, he realized, probably college age, if that. Her makeup was smudged, and her curly brown hair was pulled into a haphazard pony tail as if she'd partied all night and rolled into work without bothering to sleep. "Okay, how 'bout Betty or Veronica?" she asked when he didn't answer her first question.

Gary frowned down at the mug. "I thought I was getting Betty, but I ended up with Veronica. Or that's what I believed until last night."

Her eyes narrowed. "I was just making small talk."

"Yeah." Gary hid his embarrassment by rubbing his face, trying to wake up. "You got a copy of the paper?"

She nodded at the window. "There's a box outside."

But it was a red Trib box, not blue. "I need the _Sun-Times_."

"You need it?" she asked with a puzzled frown. "You need the _Sun-Times_."

Gary shrugged. "I'm a fan. Of, um, Molly Green's column. And Ebert's reviews."

"Oh." Her shoulders dropped, as did the frown. "Got one behind the counter, hold on." 

She brought him a wrinkled copy of that morning's _Sun-Times_ with his eggs. "Hope the news doesn't kill your appetite. It usually does mine." She topped off his coffee, then went to the end of the counter, where a baby dozed in a carrier, and perched on a stool, opening a thick book and uncapping a highlighter. Maybe she hadn't been partying after all.

Gary shoveled in eggs and read the paper from cover to cover as the sun filtered down among the surrounding skyscrapers and the streets and sidewalks got busy. In between marking up her book and feeding the baby a bottle, the waitress gave him three more refills and some bonus toast while he read the national news, entertainment, opinions, and sports. For the first time in two years, he hadn't known most of the stories ahead of time. Just to torture himself a little more, he saved the Metro section for last.

It wasn't as bad as he'd feared: a bank robbery, but no one had been hurt; a couple of accidents, none with life-threatening injuries; a string of convenience store hold-ups on the near north side and two shootings that had wounded, but not killed, the victims. If someone was getting the paper, he was hanging on by his fingernails, not stopping everything, obviously, but minimizing the damage the best he could. There'd been a suicide two days ago. The body had been discovered thirty hours after the guy had died, so there was no way Gary, or whoever got the paper, would have known about it in time to stop him.

As usual, knowing that didn't make it any easier to take. Coffee roiled around in his gut as he read the stories and thought about the air of malice that had crept over him the past couple nights. This Chicago wasn't safe. He still had the sore ribs to prove it. Of course, he couldn't blame that one on the paper. If Tagliotti had filed her report, no one at the _Sun-Times_ had written about it. 

Still, there were enough bad things left in this day's paper to make him wonder who, if anyone, had seen it the day before. Had he tried to stop the robberies or the accidents? Had he been too busy stopping something worse to deal with them? Did he care at all about the people who'd been hurt, whether or not their injuries were life-threatening? 

And when had Gary come to rely so heavily on the paper's existence that he expected, or at least hoped for, it to come to him, even in what could be an alternate dimension? Was there any way to get back to his own dimension, if that's what it was, so he could stop worrying about this paper and take care of his own? If this was some kind of test, what did he have to do to pass?

There had to be answers somewhere. Maybe back at the beginning, like Crumb always said.

When it seemed like a reasonable enough hour for newspaper archives and university offices to be open, Gary left a generous tip for the waitress, who looked up from an argument with the cook about leaving her shift early and waved, and stepped out into a hot, humid morning. Less than ideal fishing weather, he thought a little guiltily, but he doubted Marcia would know that. His own Veronica version of Marcia wouldn't have. He wasn't sure about this sort-of-Betty-Marcia.

He was going to make his headache worse if he kept thinking this way. He had to figure out what was going on with the paper and with himself. There were lots of places that could have been the beginning, but the _Sun-Times_ building was closest.

Maybe Morris didn't work there, he thought as he crossed the Wabash Street bridge to the north side of the river. Maybe he was another figment of Gary's imagination. But when Gary walked up to the reception desk in the lobby and used the cover story that had worked so well before—he was an historian who needed a look at the archives—the security guard directed him to the basement. 

Same dark room, same caged-off maze of filing cabinets, dimly lit and smelling of the river. "Hello?" Gary called, and there was Morris, with the same slight shuffle to his gait. Gary felt the surge of relief he had when he'd seen Marissa and Chuck, but this time he quashed it.

"Morris?" Gary asked when the old man opened the door of the chain link cage that defined the archives.

"Indeed I am." This Morris spoke the way Gary remembered, with a chuckle just under the surface of his greeting.

"Gary Hobson." He held out his hand; Morris shook it without any flash of recognition. "I was told you're the person to see if I want to find out about the history of the paper, and maybe some of the people who worked here."

"You've come to the right place." The sweep of Morris's arm indicated the table that sat in the middle of the cement floor and the computer desk off to the side. They were surrounded by filing cabinets and boxes.

"I was wondering about an old friend of my grandfather's, actually." Gary set his duffle on the table and pulled out the copy of _Lost Chicago_ he'd taken from home. From Marcia's house, he reminded himself. It fell open to the photo of the typesetter, and he held it out to Morris. "You ever know a guy named Lucius Snow?"

"Old Lucius." Morris tapped the photo, then peered shrewdly at Gary. "I wondered when another one of you was going to show up."

"What do you mean?" He raised his voice over the _thrum_ of printing presses starting up on the floor above them. "You do know Snow, right?"

"Knew him," Morris corrected Gary. "What I _know_ is, he didn't have many friends. Maybe not any friends. Why are you really here?"

Gary gulped. Morris had helped him out more than once, whether he knew it or not. He owed the guy the truth. "He knew about things before they happened, right? Set the headings before the stories came in?"

Morris's eyes sparkled. "Yup."

"And he had a cat?"

"Sure did."

Gary sank down onto one of the metal chairs, cradling the book against his chest. "Oh, thank God. I wasn't imagining it. It's real."

"What's real, Mr. Hobson?"

Gary looked up at Morris. How much did he know? How much _should_ he know? "The future," he finally said.

Morris nodded as if that was the answer he'd been waiting for and sat down across from Gary. "Took you long enough to show up here." 

Running a hand through his hair, Gary tried to figure out what to ask next. _Go back to the beginning_. "Do you know what happened after Snow died?"

"They buried him up in Graceland Cemetery." Morris gave Gary the ghost of a smile, one that faded right away. He shook his head. "Shame about that young fella."

"Who?"

"You seem to be missing a few links in your chain, son. I'd think a sharp young man such as yourself would already know."

"I'm sorry, I don't."

"Hey, Morris," a new voice called, "you got another visitor." 

The security guard from the front desk led Marissa toward Morris's cage. The guard pulled the wire door open; it scraped, loud and sharp, against the concrete floor, and Marissa jumped at the sound. "You're turning into a social butterfly on me," the guard told Morris.

"I'm definitely moving up in the world." Morris chuckled as he and Gary both stood. "No offense," he told Gary.

"None taken. Hey, Marissa."

Her steps slowed, then stopped. "Mr. Hobson?"

"It's Gary." The guard backed away when Gary came over, giving a wave to Morris before he headed back to the stairs. Gary reached for Marissa's arm, but she pulled back. He hid his own frustration by asking, "What are you doing here?"

"Curiosity." She lowered her voice. "Trying to find out just how much of your story is true."

"I guess great minds think alike," he told her. Morris watched them, arms folded over his chest. Gary couldn't tell if he was hiding a smile or a scowl. "Marissa Clark, this is—uh—" He realized he'd never known if Morris was the guy's first or last name. "This is Mr. Morris." 

"Just Morris," he said as he shook the hand Marissa held out. "Nobody's called me mister anything in years."

"Morris, then," she said with a faint smile.

Gary pointed with his book at the table, and Morris nodded. "Let's sit down," Gary said for Marissa's benefit, but he let her make her way on her own, since that seemed to be what she wanted. "It's straight ahead, about three steps. There's a chair just by your left hand there."

"That one wobbles," said Morris. Gary pulled the other chair around for Marissa and straddled the wobbly one himself. 

"Morris and I were talking a little history. He's about to tell me about the last guy who came looking for Lucius Snow." He caught the way Marissa's brow furrowed. "As far as I know, Snow's the one who did what I do, before I did it." He looked to Morris, who was still studying him. "I take it that's not the whole story."

"Maybe I ought to show you instead." Morris shuffled over to the bank of filing cabinets. He muttered under his breath as he opened a drawer and sorted through files.

Gary bent closer to Marissa and lowered his voice. "Okay, what are you really doing here? Last night you couldn't get away from me fast enough."

She put her folded cane on the rickety table. Her fingers tapped a staccato rhythm against it. "Last night I wasn't thinking clearly. Mr. Fishman said there must be something wrong with you, that something must have happened. I went home, listened to that message you left on my phone, and did some thinking." She trailed off for a moment, shrugging. "I wanted to know more, and remembered you'd mentioned the archivist. So I came here."

"Thank you."

"I didn't do it for you." The firm set of her jaw and her carefully squared shoulders backed that up, but she was there, and that mattered most.

"Thanks anyway." 

Morris ambled back to the table, file folder in hand. He touched Marissa's shoulder. "Is your friend here for real?"

"I have no idea."

At least she hadn't said she wasn't his friend. Morris dropped the folder in front of Gary, then leaned back in the last available chair.

"What is it?" Marissa asked as Gary opened the folder. 

"Newspaper articles." He turned them from the neat stack, one by one, reading the headlines out loud for her. Some were familiar to him, but some weren't. "MYSTERIOUS STRANGER SAVES GIRL FROM HOSPITAL ERROR; MAN DELIVERS TWINS IN ELEVATOR; FIRE ALARM SAVES WORKERS AT FEDERAL BUILDING; CITIZEN NABS ARSONISTS; SUICIDE JUMPER TALKED DOWN FROM KEDZIE BRIDGE." None of them mentioned a name, and there were no photographs, except for the one of the babies. They were being held in a man's arms, just like Chuck had held the twins Gary had delivered, but this one didn't show a face.

He looked up at Morris. "Are these Snow? Or—no. They're whoever came looking for Snow last year, aren't they?"

"Knew you were smarter than you looked," Morris said, and Marissa snorted. "Kid came around every few weeks to talk about Snow. Seemed like he was lonely."

"But what—" Gary stopped. The article he'd just uncovered read, HERO COP DIES IN BOMB BLAST. 

"What is it?" Marissa asked, and Gary hesitated, horrified that he'd have to tell her about Crumb.

Morris tilted his head and looked at Gary, then asked Marissa, "Do you remember the Christmas before last, a bomb went off at the skating rink downtown?"

She nodded. "It was awful. Was the young man you're talking about one of the victims?"

"I don't know. The police detective—Zeke Crumb." Gary swallowed hard. He didn't want to be holding the article now, any more than he had in Detective Tagliotti's office. "This says he died." Crumb was not dead. "The bomber was injured and so was a civilian." He read the rest straight from the paper. "'Nathan Hill, twenty-four, is listed in critical condition, but expected to survive.'"

"That's terrible." Marissa ran a finger along the dusty table top. She looked sympathetic, but not devastated. Not the way she would have looked if she had known Crumb.

"Young Nate got thrown clear across the skating rink, slammed into a tree," Morris said, his voice going gruff, "but he survived that one."

"What do you mean, 'that one'?" Gary asked.

Morris didn't answer at first. He looked beyond Gary to the only solid wall in the archive area. Gary followed his gaze. There was a faint outline of drywall tape below the paint. He swallowed against a rush of memory. 

"I went to see him in the hospital a couple times." Morris nodded at the article in Gary's hand. It shook just a little. "He told me Crumb saved his life, pushed him away from the worst of it at the last minute. Real shame such a brave officer had to die like that."

"Yeah." Gary picked up the next article and stared down at the photo. A police escort, a full-dress funeral.

"Mr. Hob—Gary?" Marissa asked. "Are you all right?"

"It's just, I know—knew—Crumb."

She sucked in a gasp while Morris frowned. "And you hadn't heard of Nate Hill? Crumb was obsessed with him. Came around here asking about him more than once because he noticed the young man always had a copy of the paper with him."

Had Crumb back home ever noticed that about Gary? "No, I didn't know. I've been out of town."

Morris looked from Gary to Marissa and back, and gave a little shrug.

"Where is Nathan Hill now?" Marissa asked. Morris shook his head.

There was one last article under the one about Crumb's funeral, dated about a month after the Christmas bombing. "RUMORED ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT CLOUDS PRESIDENTIAL VISIT," Gary read out loud, but just barely. It was more outline than story, investigative journalism that had run into the brick wall of police and secret service secret-keeping. Harry Hawks's death was mentioned, but there wasn't a word about Nathan Hill.

"Crumb wasn't there to stop it," Gary muttered, and wondered if Tagliotti had tried. Maybe Nathan Hill was the crackpot she'd mentioned.

"Stop what?" Marissa asked. "I don't understand."

Morris cleared his throat. His gaze honed in on Gary as he said, "Last time I saw Nate, I brought him some of Snow's old stash I'd found. Wish I hadn't."

"Stuff you'd found in the wall?" Gary asked slowly. "Stuff like old newspapers and a business card?" Morris nodded.

"Stop _what_?" Marissa repeated.

Gary fumbled for what to tell her, tracing the headline of the story. "Someone tried to kill the president about a month after the bombing. A guy who pretended to be a secret service agent." Marley's smug, shallow smile came back to him, and Gary shuddered. "Nathan Hill must have stopped him, but this doesn't say how. Morris, this byline—does Meredith Carson still work here?"

"No, son. That was her last story for the _Sun-Times_. She took an offer from the _Globe_ and moved to Boston. Broke her heart, what happened to Mr. Hawks." Morris shook his head. "Broke Mr. Nate's heart, too. He tried to tell the police, but with Detective Crumb gone—"

"There was no one left who'd listen to him," Gary finished.

Morris nodded. "Nate was just out of the hospital when it all went down. He had trouble walking, but the last thing he told me was that he wasn't going to stop trying to save the president. He felt so bad about that detective dying, said he couldn't let it happen again."

Of course he couldn't. Somehow Nate, injured, probably alone, had managed to stop Marley's plan, and the president had survived the attempt. "My God." Gary rubbed his face. "Where is he now? I need to talk to him." Intending to neaten the stack of articles, he tapped them on the table. A clipping just a couple inches square floated to the ground.

"Might as well talk to Mr. Snow," Morris said soberly.

Gary had only half-straightened from picking up the little clipping when he realized he was holding an obituary. He froze like that, reading it to himself three times before he could breathe again.

"Nathan Hill, twenty-four, of complications from injuries sustained previously. Interment at Graceland Cemetery. Survived by sister, Mrs. Amanda Cress, of Nashville, Tennessee." 

When Gary sat up, Marissa had a hand over her mouth. Whatever she understood of this, she knew what Morris meant about talking to Snow.

"He died?" Gary asked, holding the obit out to Morris, as if he could deny it for him. "When?"

"That obit showed up a couple of days after that business with the president."

"It says he died of complications from previous injuries. Was that from the bombing?"

"You ask me, it was the complication of a bullet." Morris's laconic voice took on a new edge as he leaned forward, arms on the table. The whole thing tilted to one side. "That's what Meredith Carson thought, too. She got close to proving it before they shut her down and she got that offer. She told me it'd be best for all of us to let it lie."

Nate Hill. Twenty-four. 

_Nut jobs_ , Tagliotti had said. _Let's just say I'd have to kill you_. Gary flinched as he remembered watching, handcuffed and helpless, while Marley aimed a rifle out the window. 

Marley must have tried to frame Nate Hill. Maybe he'd been the one to kill him. There'd be no official record, Gary knew from his own experience, but the kid must have stopped Marley somehow, maybe stalled him until the cops came. Maybe the cops had shot him, thinking he was in on it with Marley. If this had gone down anything like the way it had for Gary, there weren't many people who would know the truth, and most of those would go to their graves keeping it secret. Nate certainly had.

Twenty-four years old, facing down J. T. Marley. No Crumb to believe him or come to the rescue. No Chuck or Marissa to convince the police to trust him. Gary suddenly wished he'd skipped breakfast.

"That was how long ago?" Marissa asked shakily.

"'Bout a year and a half," Morris told her.

"Has anyone else come asking about Snow since then?" Gary asked. "Or about Nate?"

"Not a soul, until the two of you showed up."

So where was the paper? Did someone have it, or had it gone away altogether? Maybe getting its lackey killed had been too much for it. Maybe it worked differently here.

"Damn shame," Morris went on, "if you'll pardon my language. Things have gotten worse in this city since Nate died." He glanced at Marissa when she shuddered, then raised a questioning eyebrow at Gary, who shrugged, though it was out of frustration rather than indifference. "People think I don't know what's going on down here in the basement, but I notice." 

Gary flipped through the articles again. There had to be some way to find out who, if anyone, had the paper now, and some way to get that person back on the right track. That had to be the reason he'd been shuffled out of his own life and into this one.

Midway through the stack of articles, a headline that he'd barely noticed the first time through caught his eye: LAST CALL AT CHICAGO BAR. He held it out so Morris could see. "This is dated after Nate died."

Morris nodded. "Seemed to be part of his story. That bar was his favorite spot. His home away from home, you might say."

"It's McGinty's," Gary said in response to Marissa's quizzical frown. "The place I—we—run now." Her lips tightened, but she didn't contradict him.

"Now I know you're on the crazy side, because McGinty's is gone." Morris gave his head a sad, slow shake. "You ask me, if Nate had been around, he would have found a way to keep it going. It was a great little place in its day. Used to play my bone there when Old Man McGinty wanted some entertainment."

"You play the bones?" Gary asked, and Marissa snickered.

"Trombone," Morris said. "Don't look so surprised. A man can have his hobbies."

"I'm not—I just—that's great." 

"Do you play blues?" Marissa asked. 

"Little bit. Jazz, too. Got a trio."

They launched into a discussion about music that went over Gary's head. He looked through the articles again, reading more carefully this time, but they held no real clues as to who Nate Hill had been, how he'd been different from Gary, and why things had turned out so horribly for him. Why hadn't the paper sent him when he could have helped Nate?

Maybe because at the time, he'd been floundering just as badly, trying to figure out what the paper wanted him to do. But he'd had help. He'd had friends. Without them, he never would have survived Marley.

"...don't you think so, Mr. Hobson? Gary?"

He blinked away the memories. "What?"

"I thought we'd lost you," Marissa said. "What were you thinking about?"

Gary gulped. How did Morris breathe down here? There didn't seem to be enough air, and he had to fight the impulse to bolt. "You're sure there's nothing more you can tell me? About Lucious Snow or Nate? Did Snow leave anything else behind?"

"Only that box in the wall. I tried to get it back, but the police wouldn't release Nate's personal effects." Morris sat back in his chair, shoulders slumped. "His sister and her husband came to the funeral. I went too, but that was about it. A couple people who said they'd worked with him before he quit his construction job. Won the lottery, he told them, though he never said as much to me."

"How sad, to be so alone," Marissa said. "I'm sure he was glad to have your friendship, Morris."

"I couldn't help him save Detective Crumb. Or himself, in the end."

Gary pushed back his chair and stood. "Well, you've been a huge help to me. To us," he added when, to his surprise, Marissa unfolded her cane and picked up her bag; apparently she meant to leave with him. "Thank you." Gary shook Morris's hand, and the old man broke into a grin.

"You come back any time, long as you bring this lovely young thing with you."

Marissa laughed. "A musician and a ladies' man. Why am I not surprised?"

The echo of Morris's deep chuckle followed them to the elevator.

* * * * *

"Okay, Gar, there's nothing to this." Chuck leaned back on the hood of his rental car and handed the newspaper over to Gary.

ERRANT SHOT PUT INJURES BAND MEMBERS 

Gary looked out onto the football field, where Marian Catholic High School's band marched in formation to a brassy, lock-step version of "Thriller." In an adjacent practice area, the track and field team was working out. "Why do they need me to stop it?"

Chuck shrugged. "I guess it takes talent to save piccolo players from flying metal balls."

"I let the air out of the pregnant lady's tires so she couldn't get in the traffic accident. Why don't you take this one?"

Chuck pointed to the bruise on his forehead. "This is what happens when I try to take your gig. You can do this. You were always the sports star."

"I played QB and ran track. I didn't throw shot put or play the tuba." Besides, his days of team sports were long since gone. Nowadays his talents ran more toward helping Chicago's professional athletes grow their already ludicrous nest eggs.

"You're good at running. Or you were." Chuck glanced at Gary's gut. "I, however, am not. Look, this is a no-brainer. You run in and swat down the shot put thingy before it can hit the piccolo player, ricochet off the tuba, and take out clarinet section. Then you run back out."

Gary gestured at the coaches, teachers, and parents lined up on the perimeter of the field. "How do I get past all those adults?"

"You're one of them, remember? Just make it up as you go along." 

"Big help you are. Remind me again why I'm doing this?"

Chuck rubbed his face with both hands, wincing when he got to the bruises. Gary felt a twinge of sympathy, though most of his aches and pains had dissipated. Not the headache, though, and Chuck's efforts to talk him into whatever it was he wanted Gary to do weren't helping. "Look, Gar, it's not so bad. There are benefits to this magic paper, whether or not you see them."

"What does that mean?"

"Means I've been listening to Marissa too much." Chuck slid off the hood and landed with a bounce on his toes. "I'll keep the air conditioner running."

Gary tossed the newspaper at Chuck and headed for the track team. The guys doing shot put looked like they'd make a great defensive line, though their aim left a lot to be desired. The shots were landing everywhere but in the target area. Gary ambled closer, but even in jeans he felt overdressed among the coaches. How would he know which kid to tackle? By the time the shot put headed toward the band, he'd be too late to stop it. 

He turned his attention to the band, which had switched to the theme from _Jaws._ Maybe he could get the piccolo players out of harm's way. 

"Hey! What are you doing?" One of the coaches stalked toward him, whistle in hand. Gary kept walking, trying to pretend like he belonged, but the coach blew his whistle, and everyone turned to look at them. Things went downhill from there.

"I'm trying to help you," Gary protested as two of the shot putters carried him bodily toward the car. "You have to watch where you're throwing those things, you hear me?" Apparently they didn't. They tossed him toward the parking lot, and he landed on his knees on the pavement. 

Chuck came over to look down at him, pulling his cell phone away from his ear. "Nice job."

Gary pushed himself off the pavement and staggered to the car. "I didn't stop the shot put."

Chuck handed him the newspaper. "Story's gone. Your distraction there must have saved the piccolo player." He went back to his phone call. "No, Cindy, I won't be back in the office today at all...yes, that means I can't cover the phone while you take your chinchilla to the acupuncturist... _Who_ called?"

Gary folded himself into the passenger seat, opened the newspaper, and stared at the spot where the story about the mishap had been. It was now occupied by an article about a corrupt alderman. Over in the practice area, the shot putters were talking to their coach. On the football field, the band started in on the theme from _The Twilight Zone_. "You're not kidding," Gary muttered.

Chuck got into the car. "Pufferfish, Gar. Gotta watch out for them"

Gary thrust the newspaper at him. "So this is what my day is like? _Every_ day?"

Without even looking at the newspaper, Chuck nodded and started the car. "Pretty much." They peeled out of the parking lot and headed back toward the expressway. 

Gary scratched his head. "Do I always just save the day and run away? Or do I change clothes in a phone booth first?"

"You always say you want to change the news, not be in it," Chuck told him. "You're fairly— _obsessive_ is the word—about staying out of it."

"So I'm not only a freak, I'm an anal-retentive freak?"

"You're not a freak."

"This is not exactly normal. How am I supposed to keep this up all day?"

"Hang in there, big guy." Chuck gunned the rental through a yellow light and headed toward the expressway onramp. "The next one's not until two, right? Plenty of time for you to buy me lunch."

"Maybe we should go back to the bar and see if Miss Clark's figured out what's going on."

Chuck snorted. "Trust me, if Trixie Belden finds anything, she'll call. Meantime, lunch. And you're buying, Mr. I'm-So-Loaded-I-Have-A-House-In-Lincoln-Park."

"No can do." Gary settled back in his seat, rubbing his arms where the kids had picked him up. "Miss Clark has my credit cards, which aren't working anyway, and I spent all my cash on that hotel room."

"That'll be a problem when we get to the toll booth robbery. Lucky for you, we have a way to get cash. Page fifty or so."

Gary turned to the last few pages of the newspaper. He blinked at the stories, then at Chuck. "These are the race results." He couldn't help but grin. "Tomorrow's, which means they're the results of today's races."

Chuck let go of the steering wheel long enough to high-five Gary. "Now you're getting it."

Gary let out a breath as a whole world of possibilities opened up before him. "Maybe this isn't such a bad deal after all." He flipped the newspaper over to the back page. "The Cubs and Sox are both playing again tonight." Inspired, he turned back a few pages. "Oh, my God. Do you know what this means?"

"You're starting to remember how this works?"

"No." Gary waited until Chuck had swerved past a lumbering delivery van, then held up the newspaper, open to the market reports. "Do you know what _this_ means?"

A slow smile spread across Chuck's battered face. "Gar, that is what I have been trying to tell you for the past two years."

* * * * *

"Are you going to work today?" Marissa asked.

Gary stopped in the middle of the _Sun-Times_ lobby. "It's not my job, not if what I think is going on is actually going on." He had to be right about that much, that he'd somehow stumbled out of his own life and into someone else's. "I don't think I can fake it well enough to keep the other guy out of trouble. You want me to get you a cab?"

Marissa shook her head. "I'm sticking with you."

"Why?" His bafflement must have come through in his voice, because she chuckled.

"I told you, I'm curious. And Strauss owes me a couple comp days, no matter what Pritchard says."

"But last night when you left, you were pissed at me, weren't you?" She sure as hell hadn't trusted him.

"Last night you surprised me." Her fingers fluttered a little against his shirt sleeve. He took the hint and guided her through the revolving doors. "I've had time to think, and while I'm not sure what all that I've learned today means, I don't think you meant to do what I thought you were doing last night." They stepped out into the warm summer morning, to the rush of cabs and horns on the street and boats down on the river.

"Whatever I did, I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm sorry." He was taking a chance saying that, but she didn't react beyond a nod of acknowledgement. "So what do you think now?" He steered them out of the flow of pedestrian traffic, to a wide stone railing overlooking the river. 

Marissa let go of his elbow and took a breath, the kind that meant she had a lot to say, and good luck to anyone who tried to interrupt. "I jumped to the wrong conclusion about you because I haven't had much reason to trust people lately, especially people I don't know. But you seemed to know me all of a sudden, a lot better than you did before. When I got home, I listened again to that message you left on my machine. You mentioned something about a paper, and things being gone. The more I thought about what you said, impossible as it seems, the more I considered trusting you, especially after..." She trailed off.

"After?" Gary leaned back, propping his elbows up on the railing.

Marissa hooked her cane around her wrist and put both hands flat on the railing. "Actions speak louder than words. You know how to guide me without dragging or pushing. How to tell me about things like where the food is on my plate. Today and last night you included me, and most of the time you let me know what was going on before I had to ask. I seriously doubt the Mr. Hobson who barely grunts at me every morning would have the slightest idea how to do any of those things, or even that they need to be done."

"Maybe I am that Mr. Hobson. Maybe I'm crazy for believing this."

"Mr. Fishman thinks you are."

"Chuck thinks a lot of things that aren't true." He ran a hand through his hair. "Look, the truth is I don't know what to think." Especially about Nathan Hill, and whoever had the paper now. 

Marissa waited through the blare of another boat horn, then said, "I don't understand even half of this. But the way you've been acting today makes me want to trust you, and to help if I can. I'm a pretty good listener."

"You're the best." And he really did need help. He glanced over; her braids were pulled back, and he could see the scar by her ear that he knew hadn't been there a few days ago. If he needed proof that there was something strange going on, there it was right in front of him. "So you believe me? About being my friend, about the paper?"

"I want to. I want to believe that something like that could be possible, that maybe there's someone or something looking out for us. I know God does, but your paper sounds more personal. More manifest. I want it to be true."

"It is, at least where I come from." Gary tried to figure out how to phrase it without setting her off again. "The things Morris talked about, and in those articles, I knew about most of them before they happened. Where I'm from, they were my responsibilities, not Nate Hill's. Detective Crumb didn't die in that explosion. He was—is—my friend. Sort of. That bomb didn't hurt anyone, and I didn't die all alone because of Marley and his damn logistics." Gary slammed his hand on the railing, and Marissa jumped. "Sorry." Marley had used him, used the paper, and that still pissed him off over a year later. 

"Who's Marley?"

"The man who wanted to kill the president. Look, Marissa, it's a really long story, and I want to hear yours, too." At that, _both_ eyebrows went up. "What do you say we grab a cup of coffee or something? Someplace public, so I don't try anything," he added wryly, hoping a little teasing wouldn't hurt.

He was rewarded with a grin as she adjusted her hand around her cane. "Okay, I'm in."

"You don't want to call your dad first? Or that biker?"

"Biker?"

"The guy from your building who pulled me off the intercom the other night? Big guy, rides a Harley, enjoys slamming me up against a wall."

She winced. "Frank is protective. Maybe too much."

"No harm done." Frank didn't matter now, not if she was there listening, just like...well, Marissa. "You mind a walk? There's a coffee shop near where you work."

"You mean where we work." Her face clouded over with confusion. "Oh."

"Yeah." They started along the river, headed for the bridge on Wabash Avenue. "It takes some getting used to."

* * * * *


	14. Chapter 14

_Remember when we fought together_  
 _It was us against the world_  
 _Remember how close we came_  
 _You want to try that again?_  
 _We can never go back_  
 _We can only go on and on_  
_~Joy Williams_

 

* * *

 

Chuck's phone went off as he and Gary settled in at the betting parlor, ready to watch the first race from Arlington. When the strains of his "Hooray for Hollywood" ringtone rose over the televisions, faces turned their way, clouded with annoyance.

"Probably Cindy again," Chuck told Gary. "I'd better take it, or she'll decide to set up a pedicure salon for poodles in my front office." Circling possible bets in the paper, Gary nodded without answering, possibly without hearing. Chuck wandered toward a quieter corner. The caller I.D. wasn't his office, and he wasn't sure if that was a good thing. He leaned against the wall beside a dusty potted plant. "Yo, Marissa."

"Is everything okay?"

Chuck glanced at their table, but Gary was already up at the counter, parlaying the first race's win into a bigger, more profitable bet. It was more heartwarming than a _Brady Bunch_ Christmas special. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Other than the fact it took you forever to answer the phone? How about Gary's false memories, or all the stories in the paper that have to be fixed today, or that you put yourself in charge of making sure they get fixed?"

"Very funny."

"I'm not joking."

"I told you, I have this under control." Which was how things were meant to be. Gary had always been great at the grunt work, but Chuck should have been the brains of the operation all along. The planner. The plotter. The chess master. The director. "The pregnant lady took a taxi and the marching band's still on the field massacring horror movie themes. We had time to spare, so we're on a little break." He winced as the trumpet call of a new race sounded over the loudspeaker system.

"Chuck, you didn't!"

"Wasn't my idea." Which was technically true. Gary had figured out the obvious—that betting a few races would get them the quick cash they needed for lunch—all on his own. Their plan for the stock market was more of a long-term thing, and still in development. None of which Marissa needed to know. "Look on the bright side, okay? At least this means he's starting to remember what the paper can do."

"That isn't what the paper is for, and you know it, even if he doesn't. What if you miss something?"

"We won't." Chuck made a mental note to check for new stories. "Anything else, or did you just call to nag?"

He could practically hear her scowling. She let out a sharp sigh and said, "Crumb's going to talk to the professor who gave the lecture Gary went to right before he disappeared."

"You think that'll help?"

"We can find out if anything strange or traumatic happened to trigger whatever this might be. You haven't seen any of the signs I told you to look for? No edginess or confusion or tremors?"

"You're the edgy one, sister. I'm telling you, he's fine. More like the Gary Hobson I've always known than he's been since before the paper came."

A cheer went up from the crowd, Gary's "Yes!" the loudest of all, as a long shot crossed the finish line in first place.

"That's not necessarily a good thing," Marissa said, but she added hesitantly, "Chuck? There's another possibility. I hate to say it. I hate that I'm even thinking it."

"Spill," Chuck commanded, hoping she could do it quickly. Gary didn't seem to notice he'd been followed to the betting counter by a horde of hard-nosed gamblers. They'd gathered in a knot behind him, listening in to his next bet. If Gary wasn't careful, he'd end up getting kidnapped, or worse, changing the odds on that trifecta.

"What if the paper did this to him? What if this is its way of preparing him for what happens when it stops? Or for something even worse?"

Chuck's first thought, that the end of the paper might be the best thing that could happen to Gary, was probably not what Marissa wanted to hear. "How could the paper make him forget the past two years? And if it wanted to stop coming, wouldn't it just stop? I mean, it did show up on his door this morning."

"I suppose you're right, but—"

"Hey, Marissa? I gotta go." Most of the gamblers had rushed the counter after Gary had walked away, but a pair of them had followed Gary to the table. Time for a rescue, Chuck-style.

"Take care of him."

"You know I will." Flipping the phone closed, Chuck stalked over to the table, where the scruffy guys were trying to read over Gary's shoulder. "Hey fellas, what's shaking?"

* * * * *

"So I figure I have to find this Dr. Stinton," Gary told Marissa. "Here's the curb." They stepped into the street together. "He can at least tell me if it's possible."

"That this is some alternate version of your own reality?" She shook her head. "I can't quite believe I'm even listening to this. But it makes a weird sort of sense."

"As weird as getting the paper a day early?"

"Something like tha—" Marissa was cut off by sirens wailing down Madison Street. Gary quick-stepped her through the crosswalk. "Sounds like an ambulance." 

"It is." It went streaking by and stopped about half a block away from them. Gary hurried toward it, already reviewing the steps for basic first aid and CPR in his head. 

"Gary!" Marissa's panicked call stopped him a few yards away. "What's going on?"

She wasn't used to him rushing off. How could she be? "Sorry. Ambulance." He took her arm, propelling her forward a lot faster than she was going to like, but he had to know what was going on. "C'mon, I want to see if I can help."

He was too late. He knew it when they reached the ambulance, should have realized it when he'd first heard the sirens. In order to change a story, he almost always had to show up before the emergency responders did. The ambulance had stopped outside a jewelry shop. The EMTs brought out an elderly woman on a stretcher. One of them spoke into a handheld while another kept up chest compressions. A young woman, elegantly coiffed, came out of the shop, sobbing into her cell phone. "I don't know, Dad. Can you meet us at the hospital?" 

A short man in a suit followed her. His hands flapped like birds' wings as he told one of the medics, "She was trying on rings, and then she collapsed." The young woman fumbled in her purse and dropped her cell. Gary started toward her, but the jeweler got there first and picked up the phone. "Let me drive you," the jeweler said, and she nodded through her tears.

"...going on?" Marissa's voice finally registered. "Gary?" she yelled over the wail of the departing siren. 

"It's okay." He touched her shoulder to let her know he was there. "I mean, it's not, but it's over." He explained what he'd seen, all the while scanning the dissipating crowd. "Someone should have been here."

"Wait a minute," Marissa said, so firmly she turned heads among the disappearing crowd. "Do you really think if you had that magic paper, you could have stopped a heart attack?"

Gary rubbed his face. "I couldn't have stopped it," he admitted, "but I could have gotten to her earlier, told her to see her doctor or something. Someone should have." 

"Are there any reporters here?"

"No." He looked around one last time, but already there was no indication at all that anything unusual had happened. "But I do stuff like this every day. It's not all stopping bombs and assassinations. Let's go get that coffee, okay?" He started forward, and she fell into step next to him.

"Not a sparrow falls," she said, trailing off as they negotiated another street crossing.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Something my grandmother used to say. It's from the bible." She shook her head. "Something else that's been hard to believe lately."

He pulled her to a stop outside the coffee shop that had the nerve to be perched where the Wall Street Deli should have been. "Marissa, what happened—"

"I'm ordering a mocha," she said over his question. "That's pretty hard to ruin. The chocolate tends to cover up the taste if they burn the coffee and if you ask for it with skim milk and no whip, that cuts out most of the calories."

Gary liked to think he could take a hint. "Mocha, sure." 

Luckily, the guy at the counter was friendlier than the one who'd been there during the non-deli non-fire. Marissa ordered something so complicated she'd probably need a user's manual; this time Gary got away with, "Coffee, black." 

He snagged a table near the window as a book club of three left. While their drinks cooled, he spent a couple minutes telling Marissa about the non-fire, and how his confusion had started. 

"Your paper told you there was a deli here?" Marissa frowned as she blew across the rim of her paper cup. "This coffee shop's been around for a few years, and the nearest deli's over on Jackson. They didn't have a fire, did they?"

"Nope." While she took a tentative sip, Gary pounced. "Look, that isn't what I want to talk to you about right now. We need to get something straight. I know you think I'm wrong to say we're more than work acquaintances. I guess the guy you think I am, the Gary Hobson you've known, he hasn't done much that would lead you to believe we could be. But where I come from, whether that's another reality or just in my mind, we are friends, and I would never do anything to hurt you."

"Like leaving me alone on a street corner?" she asked, but she smiled.

"In my defense, the Marissa I know is used to that, and she usually has Spike—that's her guide dog—with her." She looked taken aback. Gary was sure he'd said the wrong thing, but she didn't interrupt when he went on. "The point is, though, I didn't leave you. Because, like I'm trying to say here, I don't want to hurt you. And that's why I'm going to ask you something, but if you don't want to answer, I'll respect that."

"You want to know what happened to me." She traced the rim of her cup with one finger in time with the soft folk music coming through the overhead speakers. "It won't change anything."

"It'll keep me from stepping on land mines like I did last night. And maybe somebody did try to stop it, and he couldn't." Maybe because he'd been hurt, like Nate Hill. "If you tell me about it, maybe some little detail that didn't make any sense to you at the time could help me—help us—figure out what's going on with the paper." After all that, he needed a breath, but he held it until she nodded, biting her lip.

"It shouldn't be so hard to talk about it."

"You don't want to relive it," Gary guessed. Which meant it was bad.

"Something like that." Another sip of her drink, then she plunged in. "It was almost two months ago. Fifty-four days. I was late coming home from work because we had a retirement party for the office manager. I took the bus, like I usually do, and stopped at the ATM a block away from my apartment for cash because I needed—I think it was Tylenol." Her eyes darted around, like they did when she got scared. "As soon as I had the cash, they grabbed me."

Grabbed her. She wouldn't have had any warning. "Who?"

"Two men. Boys, maybe, it was hard to tell." Her voice thinned and her hand flopped, palm up, onto the table. Gary steadied both their drinks. "They pushed me up against a wall and told me to give them my purse. I should have just handed it over, but my keys were in there, and my I.D. with my address. It's stupid, I know."

Gary reached for her hand, but stopped short. "It isn't stupid to want to be safe in your own house."

Marissa shook her head. "One of them was pulling on the strap, and I dropped my cane and fought for my purse. I tried to scream, but one of them got his hand around my throat. They ripped the bag out of my hands, and then slammed my head against the wall. Maybe more than once. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital."

"My God." Those kids attacking him the day before had been bad enough. The thought of it happening to Marissa made him sick. Who would do that to her? "Why didn't anyone help?"

"Seems like you're the one who should know that." Her bitter smile scared him. She wrapped both her hands around her coffee cup. "Frank found me," she said after a moment. "It was after they'd gone, but he got me to the hospital and stayed with me until my parents came. He even made sure the locks on my place got changed right away."

"No wonder he didn't want me hanging around the other night." Gary had the answers he'd wanted, but he didn't know what to say. What he wanted now was something to _do_.

"They haven't caught the men who did it." She sat back in her chair, arms crossed. "My grandmother always told me that everything happens for a reason, but this has just made me afraid. I stayed at my parents' house for a week before I got up the guts to come back home. This morning was the first time in a long time I've gone anywhere but work on my own. If there's a reason it happened, I don't know what it is. I certainly can't find any good in it."

"Maybe—" Gary faltered. He wanted to fix this, but he was way too late. "Maybe it takes time for the good to show up." And maybe that was what he was here to do, to make sure it did.

She gave a wry, sad laugh. "I'm not holding my breath. Does knowing about it help you?"

It made him feel useless and pissed off at the paper for not going to someone who could have stopped it. "That depends. Did you get any weird phone calls that day? Anyone stop by the office, or offer you a ride home, or cab fare?"

"No. Is that what you would have done?"

"For someone I didn't know, yeah. For you?" He steepled his fingers and rubbed his thumb against his palm. "If those things hadn't worked, I would have been on that street and I would have kept them away from you. It wouldn't matter if I knew you or not. I'm so—"

"Don't say you're sorry. It doesn't do any good." She sat up a little straighter. "The problem is, who has your magic paper now?"

"I don't know. Something must have gone wrong after Nate died. I get the feeling I'm supposed to fix it, but I have no idea how. I can't even find the cat."

"What cat?"

"This really annoying cat, he comes with the paper, just shows up every morning. What kind of help is that?"

"I don't know." Marissa reached for her mocha, took a sip, and made a face. "Too milky."

Gary had to say one more thing before he let the subject drop. "Marissa? Thank you for telling me, and for listening, and for the way you showed up this morning. That's kind of like what you—the other you, I guess—did when the paper first started coming. She made me tell her what was going on, even though we only knew each other from work, and she's stuck with me ever since." 

And all the changes in Marissa's life, including going to school, getting a better job, and moving to a townhouse in a safer neighborhood, had happened since the paper. So had the windfall that had funded Chuck's move to California. Gary didn't believe those things happened solely because of him, but he'd never thought about how much his friends' lives had changed because they'd believed in the paper and helped him deal with it. "I'm guessing Nate didn't have friends like that. So why would the paper have put him in a situation where he couldn't win?"

Marissa tilted her head to the side, the way she did when she was listening to—or psychoanalyzing—him. It had become her way of having his back, of taking care of him, and he'd missed it without realizing it. "You're thinking it should have been you. That you should have died in Nate's place somehow."

"It _was_ me. I was there. Marley would have killed me and the president and framed me for the whole thing, but because of Marissa and Chuck and Crumb, I didn't die. I don't think Nate was supposed to die, either. I know Crumb wasn't." He propped his elbows on the small table and rested his head on his hands. "This place is all wrong, except for you."

"You don't just need to find that paper. You need to find out how to get home." 

The quaver in her voice made him look up. He moved too fast, and knocked over his half-empty coffee cup. "Damn. Sorry." He pulled the table away to keep the coffee from running into her lap and grabbed handfuls of napkins from the nearby counter. 

As he dabbed at the puddles of coffee, he told Marissa, "I'm not leaving here until things are cleaned up. With the paper, I mean," he added needlessly. Her eyes had already gone wide with understanding. "I want to get home, but this is important, too."

She nodded. "Who do we see about making either one of those things happen?"

"We?" After what he'd just heard, Gary didn't deserve the surge of hope that made his voice crack. "You're sure about that?"

"More sure than I've been about anything in a long time." She stood, unfolded her cane with a snap, and shot him a determined smile. "Where to next?"

* * * * *

Chuck let out a satisfied burp as he merged onto the expressway. "Man. Wasn't that fantastic? How did you know about that restaurant?"

"Jules's? I go there a couple times a month. Marcia says it's a good place to hook clients." So did Phil, and he'd sent Gary there more than once to close deals. It was expensive, exclusive, and unknown to most tourists, a perfect place to do business. Or feed a ravenous Chuck Fishman.

"I'm telling you, you can _not_ get steak like that in California without a private jet and a cargo hold full of dry ice. The only thing that would have made it better is if you'd let me have more than one glass of Scotch."

"You're driving."

"If I'm high, it is on grade-A Chicago beef, my friend." Chuck cast a sidelong glance at him. "What's with you not finishing your porterhouse?"

"One of us needs to be able to move fast, if this morning's any indication. It has to be ninety degrees out here already." Both of which were true, though neither was the real reason. Gary's world was more than a little wobbly at the moment, and it seemed to have affected his appetite along with everything else.

Smirking, Chuck reached for his phone. "You're starting to like this gig. I've got to call Marissa."

Gary snatched the phone away. "Keep your hands on the wheel. You think I like knowing people are going to get hurt?"

"Lighten up, buddy." Chuck cut across three lanes to get to the Skyway exit. "I had to rein you in back at the OTB, but now you're acting like as much of a stick-in-the-mud as—"

"Don't go there. I'm nothing like that cop."

"I was going to say Marissa."

"No you weren't."

"Sure I was. And by the way, if you give that doggie bag to Spike, I'm will fight him for it."

That wasn't a fight he'd win. Gary had seen enough of the German Shepherd to know that much. "You get it away from him, and I'll buy you a whole bottle of Scotch to go with it."

"Yet another reason for that beast to hate me," Chuck muttered.

Gary bit back a grin. Wobbly world or not, it was good to have Chuck talking to him again. "Miss Clark doesn't seem that bad."

Chuck spared him a narrowed glance, then one eyebrow sprang up. "Good one." He turned his attention back to the road and shook his head. "But it's usually my job to give Marissa shit. Maybe we should keep it that way."

Gary dropped Chuck's cell in the cup holder between them and opened the newspaper to the story of the next disaster. Here was the real reason he hadn't felt like eating. How was he supposed to keep some guy with a gun from robbing a toll booth? "You really think I can stop this just by talking to him and handing him some cash?"

"I've seen you do this a hundred times," Chuck said airily.

Gary stared at him.

"A dozen. Okay, once. But it worked. Who can resist the Boy Scout charm of Gary Hobson?"

"A desperate man with a loaded weapon." The article said the tollbooth worker would be critically injured when she refused to give the guy any money. He'd shoot into the booth and grab what he could from her drawer before speeding away.

"You can do this." They slowed to a crawl along with the rest of the traffic as the Skyway widened out into toll lanes. "This is it."

There was no way to tell which booth was going to be robbed, but at least the article had given a description of the car. Chuck pulled into one of the automatic lanes where people tossed handfuls of change into baskets as they drove through. He stopped the car and put on his blinkers as if it had stalled. While he waved for an attendant and yelled about crappy rental cars to everyone who was honking at him, Gary jumped out of the car and scanned the lines of cars crawling toward the attended booths.

This was a business transaction. Nothing more, nothing less. All he had to do was use the money in his wallet to convince the robber to take another course of action. And pray the robber didn't shoot him in exchange.

"Green Escort, where's the green Escort?" he muttered. Four lanes over, six cars back. He sprinted through the crawl of traffic, through the diesel fumes and startled honks. The driver of the Escort was no more than a kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and a pretty scared-looking one at that. The driver's side window was down. All the windows were down, and the front windshield had a network of cracks. The kid couldn't afford to get the car fixed or wash his clothes, if the grime on his t-shirt was any indication, but he could afford a gun. 

When he reached the window, Gary blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Don't do it."

The kid jumped half a foot out of his seat. "Man, what the hell?" He reached toward the waistband of his jeans, and Gary gave up on the talking-him-out-of-it part of the plan. He dumped a roll of bills, all that was left of his morning's winnings, into the kid's lap. The boy looked down, and his face went from angry to shocked. "What are you doing?"

Gary pointed to the booth. "That woman up there, she's got two little kids who need their mom. I just gave you a lot more cash than you'll ever get from her."

The cars in front of the Escort moved forward. The kid pulled ahead, and Gary trotted alongside, one hand gripping the front door. When the line stopped again, the kid turned wide brown eyes on Gary. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you not to hurt anyone." They were getting down to crunch time. The car ahead of them pulled forward to the booth. "And maybe get rid of the gun, huh?"

The kid's features settled into a snarl and he revved the car forward, throwing Gary's hand off the door. A semi right behind Gary blew its horn. Gary whirled away from the Escort's lane and saw Chuck waving his arms. He wove his way back to Chuck's car, hoping that Chuck's plan hadn't raised the plaza's annoyance level to a point where someone else would snap.

"Popped back into gear!" Chuck yelled to the pair of attendants who were backing away from the revving car. "You know how rentals are. Everything okay?" he asked Gary as they buckled in.

"I hope so. Let's go."

Chuck pulled up to the basket and held out a hand. "Toll?"

"I gave all my money to the kid."

"All of it?" Chuck squeaked.

"He was going to shoot someone! I'm lucky he didn't shoot me."

Grumbling under his breath, Chuck pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and tossed them in the basket. The guard arm came up, and he pulled forward, still muttering.

"You were the one with the brilliant plan," Gary told him. "You said to give the guy money."

"I didn't say to give him all of it."

"Well he sure as hell didn't get the chunk you spent on lunch."

"There were almost two thousand bucks left!" Chuck merged into the accelerating traffic leaving the toll plaza.

"You didn't see him. His car was falling apart, his clothes were dirty, and his eyes—he looked so damned lost."

"His eyes?" Mouth half-open, Chuck shook his head. "Gar, you see people like that every day. Haven't you learned not to empty your wallet every time some crook gives you puppy eyes?"

"No," Gary said, realizing the truth as he spoke it. "I _don't_ see people like that." Because he hadn't been looking. Not for a long time.

"At least tell me it worked."

Gary scanned the Skyway. The Escort was in the lane next to theirs, a couple of car lengths ahead. "I think it did."

"Find out for sure."

"How?"

Chuck rolled his eyes. "Check the paper."

"Oh." Gary retrieved it from under his shoe. "The story's gone. Now there's an article about contractor fraud in Arlington." He turned the page. "We're supposed to be out in River Grove next. We need to head the other way."

Chuck swerved in front of the Escort to get in the exit lane. "Gotta find a gas station. And you are going to pay me back for the toll."

"Yeah, I'm real worried about that two bucks." Gary flipped back to the market reports, disbelief and a new plan warring in his mind. "I'll buy you a drink tonight."

* * * * *


	15. Chapter 15

_Quantum computation is…a distinctively new way of harnessing nature…It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes._  
_~David Deutsch_

 

"This is it." Gary stopped Marissa and checked the U of Chicago map. "The High-Energy Physics Building. The guy at the visitor's center said Dr. Stinton's office is here." 

"So let's go find him." Marissa swept the walk with her cane, but Gary took a minute to watch people go in and out of the building. They carried backpacks or briefcases and were absorbed in thought—or whatever was playing on their Walkmen—or engaged in lively discussions. They were all there to learn about physics. Science. Logical stuff.

"What am I doing? There's no way a guy who works here will believe me."

"I'm not entirely sure why I believe you, and I'm here." Marissa gave his sleeve a tug. "You won't know if you don't try. Let's go."

Inside, a student pointed them down a path that was more maze than hallway, but it only took a few minutes to find the office. Dr. Stinton opened the door to Gary's knock and invited them in with a slightly baffled expression. He had the same wavy, greying hair Gary remembered, though he wasn't wearing the glasses. His office might have felt bigger if it hadn't been crammed with overflowing bookshelves. They sat in creaky wooden chairs while Stinton perched on his desk. "You're the guy who fell down the stairs at my business lecture, aren't you? I hope you're not here to file a lawsuit."

"No," Gary said. "But I do want to talk to you about what happened that day."

On his desk, Stinton had several structures that looked like the molecule models Gary had made in junior high with marshmallows and toothpicks, though these were made of polished silver and brass. He picked one up, tossing and catching it as he spoke. "Is your interest scientific, or financial?"

"Scientific," they said together. Stinton's shoulders sagged; whether from relief or disappointment, Gary couldn't quite tell.

"Gary has some questions about the concepts your lecture addressed," Marissa added. "We're wondering about certain possibilities."

"More like impossibilities," Gary muttered. He took a deep breath, leaning forward. "When you were explaining the quantum computer, you said it works by flipping particles. That those little pieces of atoms can somehow be in two places at once."

Stinton nodded. "That's one theory, although it's more a case of identical particles switching places with each other, so it seems as though the particle we're observing is in both places at once." He balanced the model on one finger, and Gary had to resist the urge to slap it down. 

"So when your computer makes them switch places, you're flipping them between dimensions?"

"Between universes, actually."

"How can there be more than one universe?" Marissa asked. "Doesn't the universe include everything?"

"Everything in one particular reality. What we experience as reality is what exists according to the physical rules of this universe. It's possible that there are others, and that they act as..." Dr. Stinton trailed off, rolling the model between his hands.

"As what?" Gary asked.

Stinton pushed a wave of hair out of his eyes. "You might think of them as membranes of reality. They're vast and flexible, but relatively thin. The hope is that with the quantum computer, we can harness atomic particles to vibrate or flip between membranes, so they can do work in more than one place at the same time. The same way a poem can contain multiple meanings in one short line, the quantum computer can harness the power of multiple atomic particles."

Gary remembered Stinton saying something similar at the lecture, but he didn't quite get it. He wished the guy would use smaller—well, not words. Concepts. "You said your computer was a model, that it'll take years to make it work." 

"That's not exactly what I said." Stinton peered at Gary, as if he could read something on his face, then blinked again. "Our prototype acts like it should if the theory is correct. We aren't able to harness the power needed to make the particles do any kind of work yet, but we seem to be able to flip one or two particles at a time with this machine."

Gary's stomach did a flip of its own. Speculating that he was caught in a scenario straight off the SciFi Channel was one thing; having a physicist confirm it was a whole different level of unsettling.

"These other universes?" Marissa asked hesitantly. "How much are they like ours?"

Unlike a lot of people, Stinton didn't look at Gary before he answered her. "Some are almost exactly like ours," he said, "with just a few subtle differences. Maybe in one your middle name would be different. Or you could see. It would be a big difference for you, of course, but in the grand scheme of an entire universe, it's minor. There might be another universe in which gravity works differently, or water has a different boiling point, or even one in which life itself isn't something we'd recognize as life."

"But it's possible that they could be almost exactly the same?" she asked. "Same people, same names, nearly the same lives?"

Stinton, who'd nodded along, told her, "Some theorists believe every time you make a choice, another universe is born in which everything's the same before the choice, but afterward, everything connected to that choice is different."

"That would mean there are infinite universes," Marissa said.

"Exactly."

"You—I mean that's—okay." Gary pushed his confusion away with a wave of his hand. If he had to worry about more than two universes, he'd be lost forever. "Tell me something: how big are these particles you're flipping?"

"Infinitesimal. Are you coffee drinkers?" Stinton traded the simple model he'd been playing with for one with a lot more bars and balls. "This is a caffeine molecule. There are hundreds of millions of these in your morning cup, so you can imagine how small they have to be." Stinton handed the model to Marissa. "Each of the balls on this model represents one atom, and atomic particles are exponentially smaller parts of the atoms," he went on, "so we're talking billions of those particles in your coffee cup. They're so small, even I have trouble thinking about them. I can paint you a picture with a mathematical formula, if that's where you want me to go."

If the titles of the books on his shelves were any indication, Gary was pretty sure Stinton's brand of math went where his business background couldn't follow. "What I want to know is, can you move something else between universes? Something bigger than a particle?"

Stinton shrugged. "Maybe a whole atom someday. Right now we're just working on the energy it takes to flip two particles. The problems with the decoherence that I mentioned in my lecture are the closest obstacles, of course."

"Sure, sure." Gary nodded as though he had any idea what the guy was talking about. In Marissa's hands, the caffeine model stilled, as if she'd anticipated Gary's next question. "So it couldn't be something as big as a person?"

Stinton's eyebrows disappeared under his floppy bangs. Gary rushed ahead. "At your lecture I bumped into somebody coming down those steps, someone with my build, similar voice, wearing a suit. He disappeared by the time I got back up. Ever since then, nothing's been right. My home's been replaced by a parking garage. My friend here didn't know me, my ex-wife thinks we're still married, and everyone's trying to tell me I work at a place I quit two years ago, and that another friend who I talked to the day before had died over a year ago. And I can't find my cat."

Stinton regarded Gary with quizzical concentration, as if he were a formula. "You want to blame that on my prototype?"

"I just want to know if it's possible the computer had anything to do with it."

With a sharp laugh, Stinton slid off his desk and paced behind it. "What are you saying? Do you think you're actually from some other reality, that you managed to switch universes, only to end up in a world that's just as boring as the one you left, with the possible exception of it not having your cat?"

"And my home. Don't forget that part."

Stinton planted his hands on his desk and leaned toward Marissa. "Miss, has your friend here been checked for head trauma?"

"Not that I know of." She sat up straighter. "But what he's telling you is true."

"But this is—wait a minute. Did Dr. Latimer put you up to this?"

"Who?" Gary asked.

"No," Marissa said. "Please, Dr. Stinton, just tell us if this is possible." 

He rocked back on his heels and looked at them both for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "The probability would be vanishingly low. A membrane an awful lot like ours would have to intersect with our own. They would have to be brought together by an energy wave or pulse. If the wave theory is right..." He trailed off, staring at the door behind Gary. 

"Wave theory?" Gary prompted.

"You'd have to be in the exact same spot as your doppelganger," Stinton went on, but at this point he was addressing the air, as if he could see his formulas and theories written on it. "And of course, you're presupposing constructs such as consciousness and personality are replicated, when we don't even know for sure if matter's arranged the same way, or if the physical laws of our universe apply across the multiverse. M-theory would—"

"Dr. Stinton!" Gary said sharply. "Can you explain it in laymen's terms?"

Blinking back to Gary, Stinton nodded. "There would have to have been an exact iteration of you, in _exactly_ the same place, in a universe almost exactly like ours. If the computer worked, and if it had access to an immensely powerful energy source, it could have opened a window through which you and your double could switch places."

"That has to be it," Gary said. 

"That can't be it," Stinton said. "The energy source to do that without destroying the machine and killing you in the process doesn't exist. The computer we've developed can barely summon up the power to move a pair of particles for a millisecond. To move a person, it would take more energy than a nuclear bomb. And it would have to be controlled, which would take the intelligence of—well, right now it'd take a quantum computer, at the least."

"Or _an_ intelligence." Marissa traced one of the bars in the model with her finger. "Like God."

"Or a wizard," Gary said, thinking of the book every other kid on the CTA seemed to be reading that summer. And Cat, who was so much more than just a cat.

"Or a different set of laws of physics," Stinton mused. "Which they might have, in that parallel universe."

Gary frowned. "Where I come from, gravity still pulls things down."

Stinton tilted his head. His bangs fell back into his eyes. "Okay, really, how much is Latimer paying you?"

"Nothing, I swear, I don't even know the guy!"

This time, Stinton's laugh was softer. "You must not, seeing as Dr. Latimer is a woman. I thought maybe she was trying to distract me. But I don't know what you want me to do about your predicament. It's so far beyond the realm of possibility, it isn't mathematically conceivable." He trailed off, picking up one of his models. "Then again, there is Clarke's law."

Gary looked at Marissa. "You have a law?"

"I've never even taken a physics class."

Stinton flashed Gary a twisted smile as he dropped into his creaky chair. "Arthur C. Clarke was a science fiction writer. He said that any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic. So I suppose, in the highly unlikely event that you managed to wizard up some heretofore unknown source of highly controlled energy, what you're asking about is possible." He sat back with a crooked grin. "Still, you should probably eliminate a lot of more likely possibilities before you go with this as your explanation, because if it is true, I don't see any way for you to get back without leaving a lot of destruction in your wake."

Gary felt as though he'd been punched in the gut. Again. He tried to think of a question that would make Stinton reconsider that last part, but nothing came to mind.

Stinton finally cleared his throat. "If I've answered all your questions, I have a class to teach. Want to sit in?"

Though Gary brushed off the offer, he couldn't bring himself to walk out of there. He'd been so sure that the universe-switching was the explanation for what had happened. It covered so much more than he could ever tell Stinton about, including the paper. If that wasn't what had happened, what the hell was going on?

And if it was what had happened, how the hell would he get home?

Marissa touched his arm as she stood, bringing him out of his funk enough that he could stand as well. She held out the caffeine molecule; Gary took it and found a place for it on the desk. "If you think of anything else that might help, will you contact us?" She recited her phone number, and Stinton wrote it down with a shrug. 

Gary waited until they were headed down the echoing staircase before he asked Marissa, "Why'd you give him your number?"

"You're not going to his house tonight, are you?" 

The thought of another night with Marcia, of pretending to be someone he wasn't in a place where he didn't belong, was enough to stop him in his tracks. "I can't go back there." He lowered his voice to a whisper, though it probably carried all through the stairwell. "It's like—no, it _is_ —lying to her, pretending to be her husband when where I come from we're divorced."

Marissa nodded and tapped her cane against the next step. Gary took the hint and they started down again. "That's what I thought you'd say. We should call Mr. Fishman. I'm pretty sure he has more room than I do. But if not, my sofa is yours." Her voice took on an edge. "No more park benches."

"Thanks. But I'm afraid you're going to be stuck with me," Gary said as they left the building for the sunny courtyard. "Chuck's not my biggest fan these days. Neither is Dr. Stinton. He didn't believe a word I told him."

"What did you expect him to say? This is complicated, and he can't just flip a switch and send you home."

"But isn't that how I got here in the first place? Unless he's right and I'm just crazy."

"You aren't crazy." Marissa's frown twisted into a wry smile. "Much. Look, if what you've told me about your newspaper is true, everything you're saying makes sense. If that paper really comes from a higher power, and it takes that kind of power to switch two people between universes, then of course it could happen, and of course it would happen to you."

Gary scratched the back of his head. "Are you saying you believe it all?"

"I'm getting there."

"What I still don't know is where the paper is in this universe. Reality. Whatever. It sure doesn't seem like the Gary Hobson you knew ever got it. Watch out." Gary nudged her out of the way of a couple of coeds on rollerblades. 

"That's just it. I _don't_ know him." They walked another block in silence, then she asked, "Last night, you said your wife threw you out?"

"Uh-huh."

"What happened?"

Gary stopped at a curb. "Hold on, there's some traffic coming through." While they waited for the intersection to clear, he said, "I told you, she changed the locks and threw out my stuff. On our anniversary. Okay, let's go."

"What about before that?"

This was the danger in hanging around Marissa, in any universe. Given an opening and the right mood, she'd push him to tell her stuff he didn't want to talk about, or stuff he'd left in the past. Whether or not it helped was up for debate as far as Gary was concerned. 

"There's the curb up here. Sidewalk's buckled, look out. Keep right if you can, lots of people out today." Students on bikes, professors on cell phones, buskers planted half on, half off the walk. He hoped the obstacle course of the campus path would distract her, but she just waited until they were back on a smoother stretch before she prompted him again. 

"Why did she throw you out?"

"I don't know." That was the whole problem. He still didn't know, not one hundred percent, because he hadn't been paying attention. Just like he hadn't been paying attention to Chuck before he left, or to McGinty's in the months since. "In the time we'd been married, she'd changed. We both had. I think she started listening to her dad again. He never liked me much." Gary grinned ruefully. "On our wedding day, he pulled me aside after the toasts and told me I wasn't extraordinary enough for Marcia."

Marissa stopped, pulling Gary up short. "That's horrible."

"Marcia thought so, too. At least she did that day. Once she was out of law school and I was still working in a cubicle, I think it started to sink in that I wasn't going to be the stock market shark she'd thought she could turn me into." 

They'd had fights about that, too, though Marcia hadn't let him call them fights. Discussions. They'd always been Discussions, with a capital D. He'd come out of them feeling ten times worse, and ten times less the guy he wanted to be, than when he went in. 

"I guess that day of our anniversary she remembered what her dad had said and decided to do something about it." It was more than just that day. Maybe the anniversary had been a tipping point, but if he'd been paying attention, he would have seen it coming. Not just that he wasn't becoming who Marcia had wanted him to be, but that she wasn't right for him, either. He looked around at the kids going to classes, the guy playing guitar under a nearby oak tree, the couple on a bench. Anything to keep from looking at the honest sympathy on Marissa's face. "Come on, we're almost to the bus stop."

But she didn't move. "Do you think you deserved what she did to you?"

He sighed. Guitar Guy, who was watching the couple make out, switched from a driving chord progression to a soft, strummy thing, and for a split second, Gary wanted to kick him. "I know I could have done more to save the marriage. I'm just not sure what."

Marissa shook her head. "Gary, I'm telling you, nobody who's isn't abusive deserves that, especially not a guy who goes around trying to help people like you do."

"I wasn't that guy then." He took another step forward, and this time Marissa went along with him. 

"You couldn't be the man you are now if you didn't have it in you then." She gave his arm a squeeze, the familiar one he'd missed over the past few days. "Just because she didn't see that side of you doesn't mean you deserved it."

He didn't have a response for that. "Here's the bus stop; bench is full." There were at least a dozen people waiting, checking watches and peering up the street. "Of course, I have no idea where to go now."

Marissa looked like she wanted to say something else, something more about Marcia. Gary braced himself, but instead she asked, "Are you hungry? I didn't eat much supper last night, and it's, what, past two?"

"Nearly two-thirty." No matter which reality Gary was in, whenever he didn't know what to do next, Chicago was always ready to feed him. And despite her uncomfortable questions, Marissa was ready to believe him. "Lunch'd be good."

* * * * *

"Yo ho ho!" Four-year-old Caden Winters waved his toy sword in the air as his mother carried him into his house.

"And a bottle of rum," Chuck muttered. "Kid that rowdy, you know his mom keeps her liquor cabinet stocked." He looked over the hood of the car at Gary, who stood dripping and staring at the closed door of the neat brick house. He opened his mouth to say something about how the car's upholstery would be ruined once Gar planted his wet butt on the passenger seat, but hell, it was just a rental. "Get in, buddy. We have to get through suburbia and back to Dominick's, remember?"

Gary flapped an arm, sending up a spray. "She didn't even say thank you!"

"They rarely do." Chuck rounded the front of the car, opened the passenger door, and shoved an unresisting Gary into the seat. "Most moms aren't all that thrilled about strangers grabbing their kids."

"Even if the stranger's grabbing their kid out of the deep end of the neighbor's pool?"

"Especially then. You made her feel negligent. Grateful or not, nobody likes that." He pulled away from the curb, wondering what Gary was seeing with that thousand yard stare out the windshield. His expression was that of a guy who'd just seen his worst fear come true, which made zero sense. He'd saved the kid, after all.

As Chuck navigated the tree-lined streets, headed toward the expressway, Gary shook his head like a wet dog and seemed to come back to himself. As much of himself as he'd been lately, which wasn't a whole hell of a lot. 

"Chuck."

"Yeah?"

"I just jumped into a swimming pool."

"You did."

"Fully clothed." Gary looked down at the oxford shirt plastered against his skin. "Guess I'm glad they aren't my best clothes. If I even own any decent clothes."

"You saved that kid's life," Chuck reminded him. "What's more important than that?"

"He was face down, just floating. If we'd shown up a minute later, it would have been too late," Gary went on as if Chuck hadn't spoken. "He would have drowned just because he was playing pirates."

"Yeah, well, we weren't a minute later. You saved him. Not to mention the marching band, and the toll booth attendant, and the pregnant lady." Shouldn't Gary be remembering how to handle this by now? "It's the same stuff you do every day. You like being the hero." 

"I do?" Gary held out his hands and stared at them. Even with a brief glance, Chuck could see them shake. The moment's distraction meant that Chuck missed a turn, but he figured they'd hit a main road eventually if he headed in the general direction of the freeway. 

"How many kids jump in pools every day?" Gary asked. "How many of them drown?"

"One less today, thanks to you." The road curved, and within a block Chuck found himself going in the opposite direction. Damn the suburbs, anyway. What was wrong with a good old-fashioned grid system?

"How many stupid accidents happen in this city, not to mention drug deals and robberies and fights and shootings?" Gary ran a hand through his hair. "This stuff never ends. When do I get a break?"

"In an hour or so, after we stop the thing at Dominick's. There's nothing in the paper after that." Chuck hesitated, then added, "Unless something changes." Up until now, Chuck had been feeling a little nostalgic. Hollywood had its own challenges, but he had to admit he'd kind of missed helping Gary; missed the adrenaline rush of contributing to stopping accidents and saving lives. It was good creative fodder, or would be once he had time to process it into something he could sell to the networks. But this waiting for the real Gary, the Gary who plowed through disaster after disaster and came through cranky but mostly unscathed, was unnerving. 

"I can't take responsibility for all these people," Gary said hoarsely. 

"That's what I tried to tell you when the paper started coming, but you didn't want to listen." Hell, Gary had seemed to secretly crave the way the paper and the whole city had needed him almost as much as he enjoyed griping about it. But he didn't seem to be even a little bit satisfied about what he'd done today. He seemed haunted by it. "You _wanted_ the responsibility."

"I don't want it now." 

Dread settled in Chuck's stomach, just enough to make him uncomfortable. Playing the horses and the market to get some spare cash was one thing, but hearing Gary Hobson, Chicago's resident superhero, say he didn't want responsibility was enough to make Chuck worry like—well, like Marissa.

"What I mean is, I don't remember wanting it," Gary went on. He stared out the window at a neighborhood so whitewashed and idyllic it gave Chuck the heebie-jeebies. There was a streetlight ahead, and he sped up, hoping for signs of civilization. "I remember how an Armani shirt feels against my skin, and how it's different from one from Macy's. This one is from, what, the Goodwill?" He flicked at a button on the oxford, and it popped off.

"Probably Marshalls," Chuck told him. He'd force the memories back into Gary any way he could. "You're always telling me about the great deals you get there. You sound like my Aunt Myrtle." He pushed his voice up a couple of octaves, a pretty good imitation of his mom's older sister. "'Designer quality clothing at budget prices! And don't even get me started on the joys of T.J. Maxx.'"

"I'm not kidding around here. I don't remember ever setting foot in Marshalls. But I remember Armani. Hell, the suit I was wearing yesterday is Armani. Custom tailored! How could I make that up?" Gary gestured at the expressway bridge, finally looming up ahead of them. "I remember how to drive my BMW through rush hour traffic. How Marcia chewed me out the first time I grabbed a taco at a drive through and got lettuce in the gear shift. I remember how to work the futures market and set up trust funds."

"That'd be news to Pritchard." Chuck steered the rental onto the entrance ramp and felt his shoulders relax at the relief of being free of sprawling front yards and white picket fences. Gary, on the other hand, was as worked up as ever.

"I can make people fortunes, but I can't take responsibility for their lives. Especially not the lives of little kids."

What was Chuck supposed to say to a Gary who didn't want to save kids? Luckily, the next exit offered a diversion. "Speaking of shopping," he tried, "we've got time if traffic cooperates. Let's get you some dry clothes."

"My tailor's over in Little Italy."

The last time Gary had been to a tailor was never. "We don't have time for that now," Chuck told him. "Look, don't worry about it, I'll get you a shirt and jeans. Put it on my business card, we'll count it as wardrobe for the documentary I'm going to make about all this. Or maybe it's the sequel to _Overboard_." He pulled into the parking lot of a Target. "I know this won't meet your high standards, but at least you won't get diaper rash from those wet clothes. Wait here."

"Like hell I will." Gary got as far as opening his door, but Chuck hurried around the front of the car and pushed it closed before he could get out. 

"You can't go in the store dripping all over the linoleum. Some old lady'd slip in her walker and sue, and then where would you be?" Mired in guilt, if he'd been the Gary Chuck knew. And not just since the paper had started coming. Since forever. Or at least third grade. "Tell you what, take my phone." Chuck handed Gary his cell and fished the cards with his bank account information and his broker's number from his wallet. "Work the stock page, make me rich. I'll be back in a flash."

As he walked into the store, the remnants of lunch rumbled in his gut. Probably should have called Marissa instead of giving Gary free reign with his finances. But if it would keep the guy from brooding about all the paper-related crap that had made him miserable enough to wipe the past two years from his brain, and different enough to make Chuck wonder if they hadn't all just been dropped into an episode of _Star Trek_ , it was worth it.

Either that, or Chuck was as far gone as his best friend.

* * * * *

Marissa suggested The Parthenon in Greektown for lunch. Gary wasn't a fan of Greek food, but he figured if she'd come back to help him after last night, the least he owed her was a restaurant choice. Along with everyone else at the stop, they got on a bus headed back toward the Loop that was nearly full already.

"You okay standing?" Gary guided her hand to the nearest pole. "There's a seat back to your right if you need to hold on there."

"I'm fine." Marissa hooked her cane over her wrist and gripped the pole with both hands. "I do this all the time." 

The bus started off with a lurch, and all the people who were standing moved as if a wave had gone through them. What had Stinton said about waves? Something about one going through a membrane and causing something or other. It had been pretty damn confusing, and while Gary'd gotten the idea that his theory about switching places with the Gary Hobson who belonged here was possible no matter the odds against it, he wasn't sure where it left him in terms of getting back home or fixing the problems with the paper here. If he was going to do either, he probably needed Cat. He definitely needed a clue. 

The bus bumped over a pothole, and as he reached for a seat back to steady himself, Gary caught movement out of the corner of his eye. There were a couple kids who looked to be high school age in the seat nearest Marissa. The one on the aisle side was nudging his buddy while he reached toward Marissa's leg. 

Just as the kid's fingers brushed her skirt, Gary caught Marissa's elbow and swung her to the other side of the aisle. "I think it's a little steadier here," he told her, glaring at the kid. He and his buddy laughed. 

"You can let go now," Marissa whispered between her teeth. Gary realized he was still holding her elbow, and that either her arm or his hand was shaking. The commuters who'd all been so self-absorbed a minute ago were watching them both. "Next time you do that, give me a warning."

"I'm trying to help," Gary said, but he let go. "Want to switch to the L at the next stop?" 

Marissa opened her mouth, then closed it with a sharp nod. She waited until they'd squeezed their way to the exit and the bus had pulled away in a cloud of diesel before she said, "You know, Gary, guys have tried to grope me on the bus before. I've dealt with it."

"How'd you know?" But of course she'd been able to figure it out. At the very least, she would have heard them. "I don't doubt you can deal with it, it's just that you shouldn't have to. Besides, the L stop's just a couple blocks away."

"Oh, yeah, that'll be so much better." There it was again, that fleeting, foreign note of bitterness. 

"It could be. Anything can happen, right?"

She shivered. "True."

"No, wait, that's not what I meant. Good things can happen, too."

"The men who stole my purse didn't try anything when I was on the bus beforehand." Her knuckles tightened around her cane. "They might not have even been on the bus. Those boys today were making plenty of noise. I knew what was coming. It's the ones who come out of nowhere that I worry about now."

She shouldn't have to worry. Who the hell had the paper, and why hadn't they stopped her getting hurt? From what little Gary knew, he was pretty sure a guy like Nate Hill wouldn't have let it happen, but he wouldn't have thought the paper would let a guy like Nate die, either. He checked over his shoulder, half-expecting shadowy figures despite the bright day, but there was only a knot of teenagers coming out of the MiniMart, slushies in hand. Shoplifting? No. He was starting to see threats everywhere because he didn't have the paper to warn him. Or maybe he'd had it too long. "I try to keep bad stuff from happening. It's what I do. So I didn't think about anything except stopping them from bothering you."

"And I appreciate that. It's just—" 

"Curb."

She broke off until they'd safely crossed Calumet, then added, "If I could afford a cab every day, I'd take one."

"Or a dog?" Gary couldn't imagine the kid on the bus keeping his hand if he'd pulled that stunt around Spike.

"That's a nice dream. The program's funding was cut again this spring, so it'll be a while before I make it to the top of the waiting list." A wistful look crossed her face, but she squared her shoulders. "I'll be okay. The worst happened and I came through, even if I am a little broken."

"You're not broken." It wasn't that she couldn't make her way around on her own, Gary thought as she negotiated the stairs and the turnstile at the L stop with minimal input from him. It was like the thing with the kids on the bus: she shouldn't have to. No one should, but it was Marissa he wanted to help, as much as he could help anyone when he had no paper and only a few hundred bucks to his name. "You're the strongest person I know."

There weren't many people on the platform. Gary led Marissa to the edge farthest from the tracks, then leaned on the railing and stared back the way they'd come, wondering if the paper was out there somewhere, and how it was being used.

"What do you see?" Marissa asked as if she'd read his mind. She stood at attention, both hands wrapped around the handle of her cane. "What does the city look like to you?"

Marissa had asked him that once before. "This a test?"

"No." She tilted her head. "Maybe."

Between the park and the campus buildings to the east, he caught a glimpse of the lake. "Water and buildings," he told her. "The buildings go up, the water goes out. The L winds around it like a ribbon." And none of that was what she wanted to hear. He counted pedestrians, a bike messenger, a mom with a stroller. "Mostly I see people. People who need help. People who can help. People who've given up and people who fight back and people who make it better." He stopped for breath; she ducked her head and he couldn't read her expression. "What about you? I mean, what is Chicago to you?"

He watched the top of her head for a bit before she answered. "I used to think it was home. After I was attacked, I thought about leaving, going somewhere smaller, where I'd have more control. But now—" She lifted her face, and Gary was surprised to see a faint smile. "If what you're saying is true, I'm not sure I want to miss this. It's been an amazing day so far."

Amazing wasn't the word Gary would have used. "You, uh, you mentioned God." He cast a glance around, but none of the gathering crowd seemed to be listening. Women clutched their purses tight; men in suits stood with hunched shoulders as if trying to make themselves smaller. The teenagers from the MiniMart huddled in a bunch, avoiding eye contact with adults. He was used to people being that wary at night, but in broad daylight, it made the whole city feel sinister and strange. "Back there in Stinton's office, he said intelligence, and you said God."

Marissa nodded. "Dr. Stinton said that what we think happened to you seems impossible unless some kind of intelligence is behind this universe-flipping. God is sometimes described as the ultimate intelligence, isn't He?"

"I guess so." Gary'd never thought too much about it, or at least, he'd tried not to. Marissa made that hard sometimes. "The thing is, you always say the paper comes from God. Not you-you, but the other you, you know?"

She twisted her lips. "Kind of?"

The platform rumbled under their feet. Gary put a couple tentative fingers on the back of her arm, just above her elbow. When she didn't pull away, he said, "The end car might not be so crowded." As they headed that way, he said, "When you said that, it got me thinking. If the paper really does come from God, did He make this switch happen?"

Any response Marissa might have made was drowned out as the train blew into the station. This time, Gary found an empty seat. He put Marissa on the inside and scanned the car for suspicious characters before he sat down next to her. "So what's the reason?" he asked. 

"What do you mean?"

Gary pinched the bridge of his nose. Physics, philosophy, and theology was a combination that would damage his psychology if he didn't get answers soon. "The other thing you—Marissa—always tells me is that there's a reason for everything. So maybe there's something I'm supposed to do here, something I'm supposed to make right." 

"I'm wondering the same thing." Marissa fingered the medal that hung around her neck. St. Jude. Had to be. "I think it's entirely possible that God did bring you here."

"Yeah, but the thing is, if that's true, I don't know what it is God wants me to do," Gary said. 

The man in the seat in front of them looked back over his shoulder. He was young and clean-cut, wearing a short-sleeved white oxford and a hopeful expression. "Have you lost your way? I have a pamphlet I can give you, and I'd be glad to discuss—"

"No!" The kid jumped. "Sorry," Gary added, "it's just that what I need to find isn't in any pamphlet, not unless it was published by the _Sun-Times_."

The kid blinked mud-brown eyes at Gary, then turned to Marissa. "Miss?"

"I've read that one," she said. 

"I have others." He turned back, dug around in his messenger bag for a couple seconds, then looked back, mouth agape, at the cane folded in her lap. 

Gary knew his own expression was dangerously close to a smirk the kid didn't deserve, but he was past caring. "Look, if you have anything in there about multiple universes and quantum theory, I'll take that."

"I don't think—"

"Or a cat. You got an orange tabby in your bag?"

Luckily for the kid, the L pulled to a stop at the 43rd Street station. He got off, but not before he dropped a copy of _The Book of Mormon_ in Gary's lap. "I hope you find what you're looking for, sir," he squeaked, and scurried out the door.

"You ought to join Chuck for one of his poker nights," Gary told Marissa. He tossed the book to the seat the kid had vacated. "You bluff better than anybody I know."

"It's a defense mechanism. Like your sarcasm," she said with a too-sweet smile. She dropped it when she added, "You don't like thinking about being chosen by a higher power, do you?"

"You have always been scary-good at figuring me out." 

"Hmm." She toyed with the handle of her cane. "Well, maybe I can help you figure out the rest of it, too."

"Just promise me I won't have to go to church. Last time I showed up there, some kid nearly beaned me with a Bible."

"Lucky that young man didn't do the same to you just now," Marissa said absently. Deep furrows crossed her brow.

"What is it?"

"Let's say that there is a reason you're here. Let's say it has to do with that newspaper of yours. If you fix whatever's wrong with the version of your paper that exists here, maybe whatever or whoever brought you here will take care of sending you back."

"Unless this whoever doesn't want me to go back." Gary stared out at the buildings flashing by. "And if that happens, I'll have to figure out what to do about Marcia. And how to live without the paper." Which might not be so bad, if he could ever stop thinking about it. He might even have something approaching a normal life. But Marissa, the other Marissa, had been right. Normal would be hard to settle into after two years with the paper.

"One thing at a time," this Marissa said. 

"Yeah. I mean, it seems impossible now, but..." He trailed off, remembering the last time he'd been so lost he thought he'd never get home.

"But?"

"When the paper sent me back to eighteen seventy-one, there didn't seem to be any way to get back to my own time."

"Eighteen _what_?" she squeaked. A few heads turned their way.

"But I did." Gary lowered his voice. "Maybe I just have to do what the paper wants and it'll open a door, or make a hole in one of Dr. Stinton's membranes, and I can walk through it." 

"Gary. Eighteen seventy-one?"

He gulped. It had been hard enough explaining that one to a Marissa who knew all about the paper. "This is our stop coming up."

"Right." But she didn't let it drop. She gripped his arm tight as they left the L and whispered, "I think you'd better tell me more about how, _exactly_ , you go about saving the world."

* * * * *


	16. Chapter 16

_The amazing thing is that chaotic systems don't always stay chaotic," Ben said, leaning on the gate. "Sometimes they spontaneously reorganize themselves into an orderly structure."_

_"They suddenly become less chaotic?" I said, wishing that would happen at HiTek._

_"No, that's the thing. They become more and more chaotic until they reach some sort of chaotic critical mass. When that happens, they spontaneously reorganize themselves at a higher equilibrium level. It's called self-organized criticality."_

_~Connie Willis_

 

* * *

 

"This one'll be easy, Gar," Chuck called through the half open window. He stood leaning against the car, reading the newspaper story about the food fight and robbery.

"Easy, sure. You looked up that word in the dictionary lately?" Crouched in the back seat of Chuck's rental, Gary struggled to pull off his wet jeans and put on the new ones. It was a lot harder than changing his shirt had been, but it was worth the effort. Armani or not, the dry clothes felt a hell of a lot better than those he'd worn into the pool.

Not that he'd admit as much to Chuck. He was sure that deep down, Chuck was having more fun torturing him with this newspaper insanity than he'd had at the track that morning. The guy had already refused to let him change until they'd driven all the way back into the city, claiming that it would be better to make sure they'd be at the grocery store in time to stop the fight. And true, there had been a lot of traffic, and they were pushing it at this point; the fight was supposed to start in a matter of minutes. Chuck was still enjoying this far too much.

"Cheer up." Chuck turned away from the window and used the newspaper, which he'd rolled up, to point at the Dominick's entrance across the parking lot. "You've saved at least two lives already, you're about to save one more, and you've got dry clothes."

"From Target." Gary opened the door and Chuck handed him socks and a pair of Nike hi-tops. "You couldn't find a plain t-shirt?"

"Bart Simpson is an icon of American culture. You look great."

Gary grunted as he bent over to lace the sneakers. The best he could hope for in this get-up was that he wouldn't run into anyone who knew him.

Chuck nudged his ankle with his own shoe, which, Gary noted, was a lot better quality than anything Target sold. "C'mon, Mr. Crankypants, what's your problem?"

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

"Sheesh, forget I asked."

Gary finished tying his shoes and stood. Chuck locked the car and they headed toward the store in stony silence. It was enough to make a saint nuts, all this running around from suburb to suburb, goaded into being some kind of hero, which he wasn't. His brain wasn't supposed to be fixated on the image of a little kid floating face-down in a pool, and it wasn't supposed to be unspooling into a nightmare string of images that could have been real—him trying to do rescue breathing, the boy turning blue, the mother blaming him because her child was dead. He was supposed to be watching the market, developing hedge funds, and having dinner with Marcia at someplace with great food and better cocktails, not dodging flying fruit while he fought off a panic attack.

"What kind of idiots have a food fight in the produce section?" he asked as the front doors slid open, blasting them with air conditioning. "And why do we have to stop them?"

"The kind of idiots with no aim," Chuck said. "We have to stop them because the stock boy's going to take a pineapple to the head and need brain surgery, and while the security guard's trying to break that up, some other idiot pokes a gun at the cashiers and cleans out their registers."

Gary knew that much already. He'd read the same article as Chuck. What he didn't know was why it was his job to stop it. It wasn't just that he didn't like endangering himself, getting wet, annoying strangers, and being accused of causing trouble when he was really trying to help. It was his own reaction to all this that worried him. He'd jumped into every one of those things without a cost-benefit analysis, without thinking about anything except the need to help. And every time he'd changed one of the stories in that newspaper, he'd felt a moment of elation so pure, so real, and so damned fleeting he suspected he'd imagined it. There'd been nothing like it since he'd lead Hickory to a state championship in football by calling an audible on the last play instead of following Coach Gill's game plan. The thing was, every one of those moments had been followed by long minutes imagining what could have happened if he'd been a couple seconds later, a few steps slower.

Was this truly a life he'd chosen? Was he wrong for wanting the life he remembered, even at the cost of a tool that could make him a billionaire and a sort-of hero? 

There wasn't time to tell Chuck about his confusion. When they made it to the produce section, tomatoes were already flying. Four teenagers lobbed anything they could get their hands on over the salad bar at each other, like it was some weird game of volleyball. A few shoppers who'd been caught in the crossfire cowered behind carts, while a guy in a Dominick's apron, pricing gun in hand, tried to stop the fight.

"Hey, come on, that's not—yow!" He batted an onion away with the pricing gun, but missed the plum that splatted on his head.

Gary looked at Chuck. "What are we supposed to do?"

"Pineapple!" Chuck pointed at a kid on the far side of the salad bar who was getting ready to heave a pineapple over the sneeze guard. Gary scrambled for the produce worker, tackling him to the ground as the pineapple flew over their heads. It landed in the peaches behind them, sending most of the display to the floor. Gary rolled off the produce worker, right into a mess of peach and watermelon pulp. He lay there for a moment while the shouting got louder, trying to figure out what the hell he'd just done. 

"Get up." The mess in his eyes made it hard to see whose hand was outstretched, but Gary took it. He was hauled to his feet, blinking into the face of a uniformed security guard. The spattering had stopped, but the shouting went on as managers tried to grab the offenders while sliding all over the floor. 

"The kids at least have the excuse of being kids," the guard growled, "but you're a grown man." He poked at the cartoon on Gary's shirt. "Or at least you're supposed to be. What the hell were you doing?"

"I—" A watermelon seed lodged in his throat, and Gary had to cough to get it out.

"He told us to do it!" one of the kids, dripping with tomato pulp and held by a store manager, yelled.

"Bart Simpson here?" the guard asked, shaking Gary's arm. Gary was distracted by Chuck, who stood safely at the end of the aisle, waving the newspaper and pointing toward the registers at the front of the store.

"No, the one in the blue shirt," the kid said.

"The one who's getting ready to pull a gun on that cashier," Gary insisted. The guard released his arm and turned toward the registers. Whatever he saw must have convinced him Gary was right, because he took off in that direction. Pretty soon alarms were going off and a blond guy in a blue shirt was headed out the door, the guard at his heels. 

"Gar, c'mon, let's get out of here," Chuck called. They hurried out a side door. 

"Why are we running?" Gary asked as they trotted toward Chuck's car.

"Well, A, you really don't want to stick around for questioning, do you?" They got into the car. Chuck tossed the newspaper at Gary, started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot. "And B, we have to get to the White Hen on South Boulevard, because the guy who missed his chance to rob this store is going to go there. He shoots the clerk just as the cops catch up with him."

Gary's hands were so sticky he had trouble managing the newspaper, but the new headline blared out at him: STORE CLERK, 19, IN CRITICAL CONDITION AFTER ROBBERY ATTEMPT.

"This wasn't here before."

"Until ten minutes ago, the guy who shoots the clerk was going to rob the Dominick's instead." Chuck cut across three lanes of traffic to make a turn. "You stopped that from happening, but the guy still wants cash."

How was this his fault? "I saved that produce guy from a coma, and this is the thanks I get?"

"Who's supposed to be thanking you? The guy whose plan you foiled?"

"I don't know. The universe, maybe." Gary tried to swipe seeds and pulp from his shirt, but they were stuck. Too bad they couldn't hide Bart. "Does this happen all the time?"

Chuck shrugged. "It's not like you ever have typical days."

Gary gave up on trying to do anything about the mess and slumped back on the seat. "No wonder my brain's checked out."

"Yeah, maybe." Chuck pulled into the White Hen lot. "Okay, what're we going to do now?"

"You're asking me?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, but you're the one who's done just about everything today, at least when it comes to stopping the bad stuff. Whether you realize it or not, you do know how to do this."

That was exactly the thought Gary hadn't wanted to have. The idea that all this was real and everything he remembered was not turned his stomach to lead. "That's the point. I don't want to know how!"

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I don't remember your damn newspaper. We've already stopped this guy once, and I don't want—" He swiped his hand over his shirt. "—this!"

Chuck looked out the windshield, and his eyes went wide. "We don't have time for your existential crisis. He's here."

"Who?"

"Blue shirt!" 

The guy from Dominick's jogged up to the entrance. He reached for something in the waistband of his jeans, hidden under his shirt, and pulled the door open. 

Chuck punched Gary in the shoulder. "Go!"

"I'm not going in there! He has a gun! Call the cops on your cell."

"It's too late for that." Chuck pointed to the window, where they could see the clerk putting her hands up. "Oh, _shit_." He jumped out of the car and ran for the store.

"Wait! Chuck, what the hell are you doing?" 

There were sirens, a couple blocks away from the sound of it. The clerk must have hit some kind of alarm. Gary blinked down at the headline, and it changed right before his eyes. The ink of the original headline faded and new words appeared.

TWO GUNNED DOWN IN ROBBERY

"Two? Chuck!" Gary was out of the car in an instant, running for the store. Again, not thinking. He didn't want to think. He wanted to unsee the black and white photo in the newspaper: ambulances, cop cars, and dark spatters on the White Hen's big front window.

He threw open the door. Blue Shirt had his gun trained on a stammering Chuck, who had his back to Gary. The clerk, her face a mask of fear, reached for something under the counter. The part of Gary that had been protesting that this wasn't real, that this absolutely could not be his life, went silent. He dove for Chuck, and they both landed on the floor as a shot erupted over their heads. Through the ringing in his ears, he looked up into the barrel of the gun. "I'm gonna goddamn kill you!" the robber screamed. "You son of a—"

There was an almighty _thunk_ , and Blue Shirt dropped to the floor inches from Gary. His eyes snapped closed, and he didn't move. The clerk stood just behind him, panting, a baseball bat shaking in her hands.

"You okay?" Gary asked her.

"I don't know," she quavered, her words nearly lost in the sirens that were in the parking lot now. "You—he—"

"Gar? Need to breathe." Chuck's muffled voice cut through her fear. 

Gary rolled off Chuck and was trying to stand when the place flooded with cops.

"Everybody freeze!"

Gary dropped back to the floor, landing on his ass. Chuck stayed down, but he turned his head so that their eyes met. 

_Thanks_ , Chuck mouthed. 

Gary drew up his knees and buried his head. He'd jumped in front of a gun. He hadn't thought.

This could not be his life.

* * * * *

"So then Marissa told the guard she could absorb the paintings' auras, and Chuck walked in the front door and pretended to be a security consultant. When the alarm went off, he let me and Clive in and we switched out the paintings." Gary tore into his gyro. Meat and pita, no sauce. It wasn't too much the worse for having gone cold while he told Marissa yet another story about the paper.

Marissa stabbed at the remains of her lunch. "So you gave the crazy man with the gun the real painting?"

"He got caught with it. Ended up in jail. Which I would have known was going to happen if Clive hadn't thrown away my paper. We got away by the skin of our teeth."

"And you liked it." She pointed her fork, which still held a couple of olives, in his direction. "You like doing this a lot more than you let on, Mister. It's in your voice."

What was wrong with his voice? "Maybe sometimes, but other times, it's a real pain in the butt." 

"Sounds like you have friends to help you when that happens."

"Chuck did. You do—I mean, she does. When I let her."

"Why wouldn't you let her? Doesn't she like doing it?"

"I wouldn't say that." Gary gulped down some water, trying to wash away the memory of the last conversation he'd had with Marissa back home. "She does want to help, all the time. But I can't let her get hurt. She's the only one left who knows about the paper."

Marissa waited a beat, as if listening for everything he wasn't saying, could barely admit to himself, before she said, "Maybe she thinks the benefits of being part of all that outweigh the risks. You said she has a dog because of the paper, and is going to school, and she gets to be around a bit of magic. Maybe she wants to help you. Maybe you should let her make the choice."

"Yeah," Gary said. There was no maybe about it. The other Marissa, _his_ Marissa, had been trying to tell him that for a long time. "I should have listened more, I guess. Or better."

A plastic bag landed on the table, sending spanakopita crumbs flying. He looked up. "Chuck?"

"About time you got here," Marissa said.

"I had to get out from under Pritchard's nose on a day when you're both playing hooky, plus you sent me to an electronics store," Chuck said. "Do you know how hard it is to get any help at those places?"

Marissa shook her head. "It was a simple task."

"I'm a complicated man." Chuck pulled a chair up to their table, casting a curious look between them. "He treating you okay?"

"Of course he is."

"Chuck," Gary asked, "why—"

"He put on the Sir Lancelot act for you?"

"I don't think it's an act."

"That's the whole problem, isn't it?"

"Guys!" Gary snapped. "What's going on?"

Chuck pushed the bag to Gary without looking at him. "Marissa called me when you were in the john. Open it."

Gary pulled out a box and stared at it. "A police scanner?"

"She said it was on your list for Santa." Chuck loosened his tie. "Then she volunteered me to be the elf."

"You're about the right height," Gary told him.

"Very funny." Chuck finally gave Gary a direct, evaluating look, as though he was waiting for him to transform into some kind of monster. After what he'd learned about what had happened to Marissa, Gary supposed he couldn't blame him. "Seriously, Marissa, you okay with this guy?"

"I told you, he's not who we thought he was last night."

"Right." Chuck cast one more assessing look between them, shrugged as if he'd come to some kind of decision, and popped what was left of the spanakopita into his mouth. "What's for lunch?"

Gary turned his attention back to the box. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"I thought it might help you find the person with the paper. We can listen to find out where there's trouble, and go to the crime scenes to look for someone who does whatever you would do," Marissa said. "I know it's not as good as knowing what's going to happen, but at least you won't have to wait to read about it the next day. And maybe you can find whoever has the paper."

"That's really smart," Gary began, but it seemed Chuck wasn't going to let him finish a sentence.

"I still don't believe this. I mean, why do you think this mystery man of yours is going to be hanging around disasters? If I got a clairvoyant newspaper, I'd have other plans. Buy a lottery ticket. Hit the track. Call my bookie."

Gary opened his mouth to tell him he could do a lot more than that, then shut it. Better not give him any ideas.

"That isn't what it's for," Marissa said. "It's for doing good, for helping people. That's what Gary does."

"Look who's done a one-eighty," Chuck muttered. "I mean, just 'cause he's suddenly impersonating a Boy Scout doesn't mean that whoever has this paper of his does the same thing. He—"

"Or she," Marissa said.

"—might have other ideas." Chuck stole a handful of fries off Gary's plate. "These are cold. So what have you super sleuths been up to all day?"

While Chuck demolished what was left of Gary's food and snuck potatoes and lamb off Marissa's plate, they filled him in on what little they'd learned from Dr. Stinton. 

"You went to the U of Chicago? I'm surprised they didn't put the both of you into a psych study." Chuck turned to Marissa. "So, not only do you believe he has a magic newspaper, you think he's from another dimension?" He snapped his fingers in front of her face. "You believe him, just like that."

"It's not just like that." She waved his hand away. "It's a lot of things. Trust me, this isn't the Gary Hobson you've been angry at for the past year."

"Looks like the same guy," Chuck said.

"I'm not." Gary rushed ahead before they could cut him off again, "And this is not the Chicago I know. I think that's why I'm here, though. I think we can make it better."

Marissa smiled, but Chuck let out a half-laugh and tilted his chair back. "Open your eyes, Gar. This city is a shark pond. There's no way one person can fix it."

"Maybe not, but if that one person has help, maybe he can. In my Chicago, that's pretty much how it works." Or at least, that was how it had worked until Chuck left. Lately it was turning into more than he could handle. Maybe that's why he was here, to figure out more about how the paper worked so he could have a little more control. That made it more important than ever to find the paper and its recipient. If nothing else, he wanted to talk to the guy who'd sat back and let Marissa get mugged.

" _Your_ Chicago?"

"Gary's made the place he's from better by helping people," Marissa said.

"Oh, right, everyone in _his_ Chicago is safe as houses, and there are always lollipops for the kiddies." Chuck's chair came down on all four legs, and his expression darkened. "His Chicago is a fairy tale."

"It isn't perfect. I never said that." Especially now he was doing so much on his own. Gary spun his hand around as he fought for the right words. "Look, what if this place is the fairy tale? Not one with rainbows and princesses. One with wolves and curses, where everything's wrong or backwards, like in an evil queen's mirror."

Marissa shivered.

"So you're, what, the handsome prince who swoops in to fix it all? Right." Rolling his eyes, Chuck ran Gary's last French fry through the ketchup pool on his plate and used it to point to the police scanner. "I only brought that thing to you because I wanted an excuse to get out of work. Pay the bill and let's see if it actually works."

* * * * *

Chuck parked in the alley behind McGinty's, muttering something about Gary scaring away customers in his produce-spattered state. Gary couldn't blame him. After nearly two hours of questioning by the police, his clothes were stuck to his skin, his hair was stiff with gunk, and there was an undeniably ripe haze around him. All he wanted was a shower and another set of clean clothes, even if they came from a discount store. Not to mention a way to get the horror movies that had been playing all day out of his head. He followed Chuck through the kitchen's gantlet of puzzled stares and half-asked questions and into the office, where a more formidable obstacle waited.

"Chuck? Gary?" Miss Clark shot up from her chair the moment they came in, blocking the narrow path to the stairs. "Are you guys okay?"

"Fine." Gary would have pushed past her, but good manners made him hesitate.

"Did you take care of everything in the paper?"

"Yeah, we covered it," Chuck said. "At least for now."

"And I'd really like to get upstairs," Gary said, "so if you don't mind?"

She must have minded, because she didn't move. "Gary, I've been looking into reasons why your memory might have changed. I need to know if you've experienced any physical symptoms like nausea or headaches."

It was just as bad as the way the cops had interrogated him, wanting to know how he and Chuck had just happened to be in both places the robber had been. Every question felt like something metal scratching across his shoulders and down his arms. Nails, or maybe a cheese grater. "Not since the first day." 

Miss Clark leaned forward, just enough to make Gary step back. "But that day, you did?"

"Well, yeah, but I was lost. I had no idea what was going on." He looked at Chuck, who rolled his eyes.

Chuck was there to roll his eyes. He wasn't bleeding his life out on the sticky floor of the White Hen. Gary wanted to be grateful for that, but instead he was weighed down by the responsibility he'd assumed, and messed up. Chuck wouldn't have been anywhere near that gun if Gary had gone into the store instead. 

"What about today?" Miss Clark pressed. "How do you feel right now?"

"I feel like someone threw a pineapple at me and stuck a gun in my face and all the thanks I got for it was a bunch of suspicious questions from the cops, all right?"

"What?"

"It's okay," Chuck told her. "Everything's okay, but maybe you should let the guy take a shower."

She sniffed in Gary's direction, and her eyebrows went up. For a moment, Gary thought he was going to make it past her, but she stayed planted in the aisle and reached for a piece of thick paper on the desk. "This is important, too. I've been researching this for hours, and I can't find a reasonable explanation." She ran her fingers over the paper. "Have you felt a blurred sense of identity, or the sense that the people around you are unreal? Have you felt detached from yourself?"

"Well, of course I have," he said over Chuck's snort. "That's what this whole thing is about, isn't it? "

Her frown deepened. "Those are symptoms of dissociative amnesia." She held up the Braille printout as if he could read it. "It's caused by long-term trauma sometime in the past, most often being abused as a child."

Gary exchanged an incredulous look with Chuck. "The answer to that one is no," Chuck said.

"If you'd met my parents you'd know that."

"I _have_ met your parents," she said. "Which is why I don't think that's the right diagnosis at all. But it's the only set of symptoms that fit. Are you experiencing any anxiety?"

"Of course I'm experiencing anxiety!" he snapped. She started and dropped her paper. He leaned in close. "I've got nothing but anxiety here. My wife won't talk to me, I was nearly shot, I jumped into a swimming pool, I'm covered in fruit, and people keep asking me questions I can't answer. What do you _think_ I'm experiencing?"

The combination of worry and eagerness on her face was replaced by something darker. "Don't get cranky with me."

Since his scowl would be wasted on her, Gary directed it at Chuck. "What is with the pair of you? I have a right to be cranky!"

"Not with me you don't," Miss Clark said. "I've spent this whole day trying to figure out what happened to you."

Gary shook the newspaper in her face. "And I've spent it trying to figure out what this is and how the hell I'm supposed to live up to it, when what I really want is to get rid of the stupid thing." He dropped it on the desk, then took hold of Miss Clark's shoulders and scooted her aside, manners be damned. "Right now the only thing that's going to make me feel better is a shower."

"Gary?" The way she choked out his name almost stopped him—but only almost. 

As he tromped up the stairs, he heard Chuck say, "Let him go." He opened the door to the loft, but a soft meow made him look down. The cat was perched on the threshold. It stopped him long enough to realize that the conversation about him was still going on below, carried up the stairs by some trick of acoustics.

"So what's the over-under on when you're going to let up on him?" Chuck asked. "Hours? Days?"

"I'm trying to help him."

"I know, and I know this whole thing is strange. But he's doing what he has to, whether he likes it or not. Whatever's going on in his brain, it's probably caused by stress, right? What you're doing is adding to that stress."

Miss Clark's voice wavered. "I can't figure out what's wrong with him if he won't talk to me."

"Is that what this is about?"

"Meaning what?" 

Chuck's voice took on the tone that meant he was going in for the kill. "Meaning, are you upset because he's got amnesia about the paper, or because he doesn't remember you?"

The cat pawed at Gary's shin. He shook his foot, but the cat didn't leave. 

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," Miss Clark said, a little less strident than before. "I don't think Gary has amnesia. If he really was dealing with something traumatic enough to cause any of the known forms of it, he'd barely have been able to function today, let alone take care of the paper. Especially if something related to the paper caused the amnesia in the first place." 

Gary felt a frisson at the back of his neck as he stared down at the cat. There was something in what Miss Clark was saying, some message she didn't mean to deliver and that he couldn't quite suss out, but it was there all the same. The weird thing, as if the whole day hadn't been weird enough, was his sudden certainty that the cat knew, and would tell him if they could find a common language.

"Of course he could function. Grumpily, but he functioned," Chuck said. "Look, Marissa, it has to be amnesia. Maybe we should hit him on the head."

"What?"

"You know, whack him back to himself." Gary rubbed the back of his head; Chuck sounded a little too eager. "It works all the time."

"Oh, sure it does," Miss Clark said with an edge of sarcasm that was new. "In soap operas. Chuck, if there's one thing I've learned today, it's that amnesia is vanishingly rare in real life, and it doesn't come with a set of brand new memories."

"Maybe it's some form they haven't put in the books yet. It'd be just like Gar to invent his own variation. The point is, he _is_ handling the paper with my help, even if he's not quite himself."

The frisson grew more insistent. 

"No. When Marcia threw him out, he wasn't quite himself. When Marley was after him, he wasn't quite himself."

"Who's Marley?" Gary asked the cat in a whisper. It butted its head against his ankle.

"When he couldn't save JoJo or Nikki Kurasek's parents, then he wasn't _quite_ himself. This is different; He's not himself at _all_ , and I can't figure out why. I've researched every book and website I can think of. I called three of my professors. No one's ever heard of anything like this. How do we bring him back?"

Gary still wasn't sure he wanted to be brought back.

"We just have to stick with him," Chuck said. "Give him time, and he'll come around." 

There was a moment of silence, or maybe one of them said something he couldn't hear, and then Miss Clark asked, "What did he mean about a gun?"

"Amnesia or not, he saved my life out there. C'mon, I need a drink if I'm going to explain that one."

Their voices drifted out toward the bar. Gary stepped over the cat and made a beeline for the shower.

Half an hour later, he felt better than he had all day, which wasn't saying much. At least he didn't smell like sweat and fruit salad. He went downstairs, his grumbling stomach protesting that he needed to eat. But the cat was in the otherwise empty office, perched on top of the newspaper and watching him. Again.

He could have walked right past it, but the cat's inquisitive stare reminded him of what awaited him. Food and a stiff drink, sure, but also more questions he couldn't answer and expectations he couldn't meet.

He dropped into the desk chair. The cat leapt into his lap, knocking the mouse to the floor. "Would you leave me alone for five minutes?" Gary asked. "You're worse than she is." As if it understood, the cat took off toward the half-open door to the bar. Gary plopped the mouse back on the desk, which brought the computer screen out of its sleep with a whirr. The whole setup was at least five years out of date.

It wasn't as if he'd gone snooping. The accounts for McGinty's were right in front of him. A quarterly profit and loss statement, the payroll, electronic copies of invoices that needed to be paid. He started clicking and scrolling through the spreadsheets through sheer force of habit, mentally projecting the bottom line out a couple months. For a bar on the edge of one of the trendiest parts of the city, it wasn't doing too great, not even as well as he remembered it doing before he'd helped Kaddison buy out Ed McGinty. If this was Gary's business, the way these people kept saying it was, he wasn't living up to his own standards. Still, there were no problems that an influx of cash invested for maximum return wouldn't cure. His gaze landed on the newspaper, and he remembered the transactions he'd called in to Chuck's broker that afternoon.

A few clicks and he was online, checking the new balances in Chuck's account against the closing numbers in the market report. Every stock he'd bought had climbed the way the newspaper had said it would. The only question was whether they'd keep climbing in the next few days, or if he should sell them off now. He didn't have a lot of respect for day traders, and he supposed that if the SEC squinted at his scheme it could _technically_ be called insider trading, but nobody at the SEC—nobody in their right mind—would ever believe the source of Gary's information existed, so they probably weren't going to be squinting anytime soon.

He knew any money he earned Chuck would go right into Chuck's pocket and back out again just as quickly, but what if he took a small amount from McGinty's accounts to invest? Just a couple days' receipts would be enough to make a start. By the time anyone knew, the initial amount could be doubled, maybe even tripled. There was no way that could be wrong. A thriving business was an asset to the owner, the employees, the neighborhood, and the city of Chicago. He'd be doing at least as much good by helping these people succeed as he would by saving produce boys from flying pineapples.

He knew how to do this, knew a hell of a lot more about it than he did about stopping drownings, fruit fights, and—he winced against the memory of a gun waving in his face. He knew how to do _this_ , he told himself again. The computer was still logged in to the bank accounts. Half a dozen clicks and the investment was made. He was absorbed in looking for another promising scenario when the door out to the bar squeaked open. 

"Gary?" Miss Clark came around the divider, the cat in her arms and her cane dangling from her wrist. Gary started, caught red-handed, then realized she couldn't see what was on the screen or which page the newspaper was open to.

And why should he feel guilty? The bar was his business, wasn't it? Just because Chuck had warned him not to _tell_ Miss Clark about using the newspaper to make money didn't mean he couldn't do it.

"Is that you, Gary? Cat's acting strange."

"Uh, yeah, it's me." He logged out of the accounts, clicked out of the web browser, and stood. "I wanted to look up some things online."

She frowned. "What kinds of things?"

"Symptoms." If she'd been checking up on him, he figured he was allowed to do it, too. "Of that amnesia you were talking about."

Consternation and sympathy crossed her face in nearly the same moment, followed by a tight control that was probably supposed to look a lot more patient than it did. "Did you find anything?" 

"I have no idea what's going on." Which was true. Just because the cat's eyes had narrowed from round and bright green to dark slits didn't mean he'd done anything wrong.

"Chuck told me about everything that happened today. It must have been tough, but it's great you helped all those people, especially if you don't remember the paper." 

"Yeah, well." Gary ran a hand through his damp hair. "We survived it."

"Chuck says he survived because you saved his life."

Gary grunted. "The clerk saved mine." He knew she wanted details; it was in the way she stood, attentive, methodically petting the cat but not relaxing into it at all. There was no way he was going to relive the day's events with her.

The silence stretched while she bit her lip. "Gary, I'm sorry." She paused and drew a breath, and, remembering what Chuck had said about her and that word, Gary felt another _thunk_ of guilt, along with that same annoying sensation of a cheese grater scratching at his arms. "I can't believe I'm taking advice from Chuck of all people, but he pointed out how hard today has been for you. Chuck says I've made it more difficult. For that, I'm truly sorry. If there's anything I can do to make this easier, all you have to do is ask."

"I'm fine," he said, because he really didn't want to hear the rest. "Forget about it."

"But—"

"I said forget it." It came out more sharply than he'd intended. He tried to swallow his irritation, but it didn't do anything for the hole hunger was gnawing in his stomach. Still, he found a calmer voice to add, "I know you're just trying to help."

"Of course I'm trying to help." Her smile was hesitant, slightly frozen. "Whatever you need."

"Yeah, thanks." He rubbed a hand over his arm. "So, uh, I'm just going to get some dinner."

"Actually, there are a couple things I need to talk to you about. I wouldn't do this right now, but it's about the bar." She opened her arms to let the cat jump down. "There are some issues with the schedule. Sarah needs to change her nights off, and Tim won't be able to work the next few weekends because of his wedding and honeymoon. We should get him a gift, by the way. And we really need to hire a new bartender now that Robin's going back to school and Crumb's ready to take his vacation. I thought maybe we could put our heads together and figure it all out."

Gary gulped. Out in the kitchen, someone was grilling pork chops, and he was about ready to rip them right off the flames with his bare hands. "I don't know any of those people."

"Sarah's the waitress who knows all the regulars. Tim's the sous chef, and Robin tends bar on the midday shift."

"I don't know them," Gary said again, swallowing what he probably should have been telling her about the business and its prospects, "and it doesn't seem like I'm going to remember them anytime soon. Why don't you handle it?"

"Because it's something we do together." She twisted her hands around her cane. "Gary, you're the owner here, and whether you remember it or not, you care about these people. And they care about you."

He was pretty sure she was talking about more than the three staff members, but he didn't have enough brain cells to rub together to figure out a response. They were all too busy screaming for food. "I may be the owner, but I'm not exactly in my right mind, am I?" He tried a laugh, but it came out like another grunt. "Why don't I authorize you to make any personnel decisions until we figure out what's so wrong with me? "

"You're not _wrong_ ," she said fiercely, blinking hard. "You're confused. I am, too. Gary—"

"I have to eat." And he had to get out of there. This time, he managed to slip past her without so much as brushing her shoulder.

The main floor was loud and crowded, but it didn't feel half as claustrophobic as the office. He joined Chuck at the lone empty stool at the end of the bar. "You're looking more human," Chuck said. He slid a Heineken over to Gary. "Feel any better?"

Gary rubbed his arms, still trying to disperse the grating sensation. It was better out here, away from Miss Clark's scrutiny and pity and whatever else was going on there. "Not really."

"You will soon." Chuck raised his glass. "To a successful day saving Chicago, from one ex-Chicagoan who's pretty damned grateful."

"You're welcome." Gary sipped at the beer, but it only made his stomach rumble more. 

"I mean it, Gar." Chuck leaned in, and Gary knew he was about to get stupidly maudlin. "I have no idea why I ran in there, but if you hadn't followed me, that guy would have plugged me."

The last thing Gary wanted was to relive those moments, to wallow in what might have happened; to think about what Marcia would have had to say if he'd gotten himself shot trying to save Chuck; to measure, again, how far he'd gone in one day with that newspaper from the person he'd always thought he was. From the person he _thought_ he'd always thought he was. He shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it, okay? What I really want is—"

"Potato skins, mozzarella sticks, and wings." A waitress, the tall one with the floppy pony tail and chirrupy voice, slipped a tray onto the bar between them. "Marissa said you needed food pronto. They're throwing chops on the grill for you as we speak."

"Thanks, Sarah," Gary said, and her grin bloomed into a full-watt smile. 

"Anything for you, boss, you know that. Oh, there's the guys from the station. Hey, Ted!" She bopped over to a group of men who'd just come in wearing shirts with fire department logos. 

Gary had a wing in his mouth before he realized Chuck was staring at him, his head tilted, his expression hopeful. "What?" he asked through a mouthful of chicken.

"You remembered her."

"Not really." He didn't want to rehash the conversation he'd had with Miss Clark, so he added, "Name's on her shirt."

Chuck's face fell. "Oh. Yeah, I guess it is." He picked up a cheese stick and bit into it, pulling it so the mozzarella strung out. 

A perverse impulse and the need to inhale a couple more chicken wings made Gary wait until Chuck was taking another swig of his drink before he said, "By the way, your portfolio doubled today."

Chuck choked and sputtered and had to wipe his mouth before he could speak. "You—you doubled— _how_?" 

"Mizegard Tech split and shot right back up. You were in for a lot."

"A lot as in, the SEC is going to be paying me a call, a lot? Because I've had that happen once already. It wasn't much fun."

"I don't think you need to worry about that. Looked like plenty of people got in on that one at the last minute. And it's not as if your portfolio was all that great to begin with. You have to diversify, buddy. Get into more tech, maybe some local real estate, put some cash in a market fund just in case. What?"

Chuck leaned one elbow on the bar and stared at Gary, shaking his head. "Since when do you care so much about my portfolio?"

"I do this for a living. Gotta say, I like the market section of that newspaper a whole lot more than the rest of it."

Still staring, Chuck let out a low whistle, then motioned to the bartender. "I need another Crownie. Gar?"

Gary looked at the bartender. The towel slung over his shoulder covered his nametag, but Gary was on a roll. "Robin, right?"

The bartender raised an eyebrow. "She's off tonight." Too late, he pulled the towel off his shoulder. 

"Sorry, A.J." Gary waggled the bottle at the guy. "Can I get a gin and tonic instead? No, not the Tanqueray," he said when the kid reached for the nearest bottle of gin. "The Bombay."

"I thought you liked—" A.J. broke off when Chuck cleared his throat. "Sure thing, Mr. H."

"What? It's not like anybody else around here is buying the good stuff, is it?" Gary asked Chuck. "I've seen the books for this place. We need to talk about how to do more than just nickel and dime the market if I'm really stuck with it."

Chuck sputtered again. " _Stuck with_ McGinty's?"

"It's no wonder I wanted to forget it. It's got six months, tops, if it doesn't start pulling in a profit. But that's the one thing I know how to fix." He took a long pull on the drink A.J. set in front of him. "You're right about one thing, that newspaper's better than an ATM."

There was a faint gasp behind them, followed immediately by a strident "meow." 

Chuck blanched but recovered first. "Hey, Marissa, there you are. Have a seat!" He slid off his bar stool, but Miss Clark stood with her face turned toward Gary, holding the newspaper. The cat batted at the lower rung of Gary's stool.

"What did you mean, an ATM?" She asked in a far-too-calm tone. She turned to Chuck. "I know you took him to a betting parlor, but there's more, isn't there? I didn't think there was a bookie left in the city who'd take your money. What was it? Golf? NASCAR? The Cubs?"

"Magic paper or not, I wouldn't bet on the Cubs," Gary said.

"Yeah, and you don't have any place to talk when it comes to betting parlors," Chuck told her pointedly. "How's Spike doing today, anyway?"

Miss Clark bit her lip, and Gary looked from her back to Chuck. Suddenly there were sparks between them, and he didn't have the first clue why. He still couldn't see why using the newspaper to make a little extra cash was a bad idea. 

Behind Chuck, Sarah came through the door with their plates, took one look at the standoff, and turned back for the kitchen. If Gary didn't say something to break this up, he was never going to get his supper. "We needed money to talk a guy out of robbing and shooting a toll booth worker. It's the one thing I've done all day that felt right. And it's not like it was real money. I used Chuck's." It was definitely better to keep his most recent round of investments to himself until they'd had a chance to pay off. 

She shook her head. "You haven't done anything like that in well over a year, not since Marley. Why is this suddenly okay with you?"

There was that name again. "Who's Marley?"

"Forget it. Oh, wait, you already have." Chuck looked a little panicked. He tugged on the newspaper, but Miss Clark didn't let it go. "Why don't you let Gar handle the paper? You know, since he can read it and all."

"Oh, no, I'm done with the damn thing for tonight," Gary said.

"You have to—Chuck!" she snapped as he finally pulled the newspaper free. Her hands went straight to her hips. "I should have known better than to let you take him out alone with the paper. You've never understood what it's for."

"Oh, like you do? Who made you queen around here?"

Gary expected her to get even more angry, but instead she froze. Her mouth opened and closed, and then she said, much more quietly, "I'm not the queen, Chuck. I'm just the one who stayed."

Chuck flashed a look at Gary, but for the life of him, Gary didn't know what it meant, or what he could possibly say. Miss Clark just stood there doing that hard blinking thing.

"Okay, Marissa, look," Chuck finally said. "I think we all just need to relax. Why don't you sit down? Have a drink for once."

"From the sounds of things, you two are drinking enough for all of us. And making some pretty irresponsible decisions, even if you won't tell me what they are."

"C'mon, we're just being guys, you know that," Chuck said.

She crossed her arms, but to Gary she looked more sad than angry. Which only made him feel worse. "I don't need to know guys, Chuck. I know Gary. And you know as well as I do, this isn't who he is."

"Uh, Miss Clark?" Gary tried. "Maybe this is who I am now."

That was the wrong thing to say. She drew in a breath—he thought he heard a hiccup—then said, "Enjoy your drinks. I have work to do." Moving between the tables with just one hand out to guide her, she went back to the office.

"She always this intense?" Gary asked Chuck.

"With me, yeah. Not so much you." Chuck paged through the newspaper. As far as Gary could see, nothing about it had changed since they'd stopped the robbery. 

Gary looked from Chuck to the closed office door and back. "Maybe I should talk to her."

"What are you going to say? You haven't remembered anything new. You don't remember the paper, you don't remember owning this place, and you don't remember her. None of that is what she wants to hear." Chuck took a long pull of his Crownie. "Give her time, she'll get over it."

Gary downed the rest of his gin and tonic, wondering if he should give it a try anyway. He'd jumped into a lot more dangerous situations in the past few hours without thinking at all. But just when he'd found the bottom of the glass and enough nerve to head back for the office, Sarah reappeared with their plates. 

"Pork chops and mashed potatoes." Chuck shot him a conciliatory grin. "Comfort food makes everything better."

For the moment, Gary had to admit, it did.

* * * * *

Chuck was disgusted when he found out they'd taken public transportation down to the university and back into the Loop. "You are wasting a perfectly good Beemer. Which makes me wonder if you're right, and you really aren't the Gary I know. Lucky I have room for all of us." He led them down to the end of the block, where a black Lexus SUV was parked next to a fire hydrant.

"This is yours?" Gary asked. The Chuck he knew had a Lexus, too, but it was a candy-red sports car. "What are you doing with an SUV?"

"It's a man's car," Chuck said as he heaved himself into the driver's seat.

"Oh, sure, if the man's a linebacker who goes off-roading on his bye week." Gary shifted the police scanner, which looked like an oversized walkie-talkie with a lot of sleek buttons, under his arm so he could help Marissa into the SUV. 

"He's compensating," she said, and the look Chuck flashed her was so familiar and disgusted that Gary laughed out loud.

The good mood only lasted until he turned on the scanner. "Twelve-oh-four Maple, report of drug trafficking...Units in the vicinity, domestic disturbance on the twenty-three hundred block of West Lyndale...Possible shoplifting at the Jewel on Roosevelt…Officer needs assistance at Kingsbury and Huron…" The calls came so thick and fast he had trouble making out what was going on at any given one. 

Chuck started the car. "Where are we headed?" Gary looked at him, blank. "You have a plan, don't you?"

"Marissa?"

"A plan, right." She tapped on her folded cane, betraying her nervousness. "I thought if you heard something that sounds like the kind of situation you usually get involved in, we could go there, and then you could look for someone who's doing what you would do."

"I've got to tell you, that's almost as brilliant as sending me to get that stupid thing." Chuck nodded at the scanner. "Where to? If we don't get moving, I'm going to get another parking ticket." 

Gary pushed a button he guessed might be for tuning to specific channels, and a call came through loud and clear. "Residential alarm reported at West Arthur and Hoyne. Any units in vicinity, please respond."

It was a long shot, but it was the best he had. "Try that. It's up by Warren Park." 

By the time they got there, the cops were pulling away from a big brick house, and the neighborhood, which was on the tony side, was getting back to normal. Kids rode bikes and dads mowed lawns, and nobody looked like they needed help.

"Some plan," Chuck said as he headed back toward Lake Shore Drive. "We could be driving around all night. Do you have any idea how much gas this thing eats?"

"Must have been a false alarm." Gary tuned out Chuck's complaining and focused on the scanner. 

They spent the next few hours chasing disasters around the city. Calls overlapped each other: noise disturbances, stolen cars, attempted robberies, heart attacks, a boat reported missing at the marina. Gary dismissed most of them. "They're all too late," he said. "We need something that's still happening." The few they tried—a convenience store robbery, some kids climbing on scaffolding downtown, a crash on the Eisenhower—were either wrapped up by the time they reached the scene, or free of spectators. Despite Marissa's assurances, Gary was beginning to doubt his own ability to spot another recipient of the paper.

"Can we at least stop for dinner?" Chuck asked.

"You ate most of my lunch."

"And some of mine," Marissa added. "Don't think I didn't notice."

"Yeah, well, that was then, this is now. Which is after eight. C'mon, Gar, can we at least get sandwiches or something? How about fries?"

"As long as we go someplace with a drive-thru." He didn't want to miss a call.

"No problemo. There's a stand-alone Taco Town—" Chuck was interrupted by a burst of static, then the voice of a female dispatcher. A fire call at the McDonald's in River North. 

"That one," Gary said. "We can check it out and you can get your dinner."

"It's miles away. We'll never get there in time."

"It's a summer evening. That place is going to be full of people. If the person who gets the paper has any kind of heart, he'll be there making sure they get out."

"You serious?" Chuck darted a look at Gary. "He's serious." He flipped a U-turn. The blare of horns chased them down the road, and they made it to the McDonald's in about three minutes.

Black smoke poured out of the broken front windows of the restaurant. Chuck pulled into a parking lot across the street at the same time as the hook and ladder and a police car rolled up to the scene. A group of people huddled in one corner of the McDonald's lot to watch the fire. 

"I'm going to check it out." Gary crossed the street and started toward the people. Some of them were still sipping Cokes and munching on burgers, as if the fire was a spectator sport. The firefighters hooked up hoses and headed for the building.

The cops reached the outskirts of the crowd at the same time Gary did. "Everybody get out?" one of them asked. 

There were dozens of people, and most of them nodded. A guy in a McDonald's uniform, complete with hat, pushed his way toward the officers. "We got a call five minutes ago, said to clear the building." 

The cop glanced up from the handheld device he was using to take notes. It looked like someone had taken a cell phone and squashed it flat, then added a full keyboard. "You saying someone set the fire on purpose?"

"I think the fire was an accident. The call was just a strange coincidence. I thought she was making a fake bomb threat, but then flames started coming out of the fryer. We just had it worked on this morning."

She. Gary filed that away and continued to listen as he scanned beyond the crowd of customers and workers to the passers-by who had stopped to watch. The sun was finally setting, casting weird shadows that made it hard to see anyone clearly. The expressions Gary could make out were all variations of fascination, curiosity, or surprise, not the mixture of adrenaline and relief he felt after a save. 

The only thing out of place was...there.

A woman just across the street, down the block from Chuck's car. She had one hand on a baby stroller, but her attention was focused on the crowd.

Not the fire, not the trucks, not the water spraying the burning building. The people. She craned her neck and stood on tiptoe, then crouched down low. A little girl in green shorts darted out on the sidewalk to pick up a Happy Meal toy, and the woman's shoulders dropped in what Gary felt in his bones was relief.

She could have known the little girl. The kid might even have been her daughter. But she didn't call out, didn't wave, didn't cross the street. She was just glad the girl was out of the restaurant. Like Gary would have been, had he seen the potential victims' pictures in his paper. From nearly a block away, all he could make out of the woman were a dark ponytail, jeans, and a red t-shirt. The stroller's seat was a blue and yellow plaid, but it was turned away from him and he couldn't see her kid. He also couldn't see a newspaper, if there was one. Still, the manager had said "she" when he talked about the warning call.

The SUV's window slid down. Chuck stuck his head out and shouted, "Hey, Gar, find your magic paper?" 

The woman turned her head toward them. Then she pivoted, following the direction Chuck was looking, and caught Gary staring at her. In one smooth movement, she turned the stroller around. He caught a glimpse of a dark-haired baby and a bright quilt as she started through the gathering knot of spectators on that side of the street. Like he would have done.

"Wait!" Gary ran across the street, dodging cars. He saw her round a corner and followed, ignoring Chuck's calls. The street was lined with restaurants and bars, most with outdoor seating. There were plenty of pedestrians here, too, some of them headed for the show at McDonald's, others just trying to figure out where to eat. Gary pushed through the groups of walkers, trying to keep an eye on the ponytail that wove its way down the sidewalk. He'd closed some of the distance when a hand caught his arm and brought him around.

"What's—what's going on?" Chuck asked between pants.

Gary pulled away, jogging in the direction the woman had gone. By the time he reached a cross street, the crowd had thinned, but no matter which way he looked, he couldn't see a ponytail, a red shirt, or a stroller.

Chuck caught up with him again. "Gar—wh—what—oh, hell." He bent over, both hands on his knees.

Gary kicked at the air. It would have felt better if there was a can or a stick to take the brunt of his frustration. "I lost her."

"Who?"

Gary turned again, checking down each street. Maybe she'd ducked into one of the shops. "She had a stroller. Who brings a baby when she knows there's going to be a fire? If she'd had to run into the place, she couldn't have taken the kid."

"What are you saying? You saw someone with your paper?"

"I didn't see the paper, but she was acting the right way. Maybe the kid explains why she can't stop all the—" Gary froze, then whirled on Chuck. "Where's Marissa?"

"Back in the car, I guess."

"You guess?" Gary started back up the street at a run. Maybe he should have kept looking for the woman, but he couldn't shake the memory of Marissa calling after him when he'd taken off toward the jewelry store that morning, and the reason she'd been so nervous.

"She's fine," Chuck wheezed from a few feet back. "You're the one I'm worried about." 

Gary finally slowed when he reached the edge of the parking lot and saw Marissa standing outside the SUV with her cane. She had one hand on the door handle, and Gary knew she was trying to find them without getting lost. He had a feeling Chuck hadn't given her many details about the layout or even what had happened.

"We're back," he said when he was close enough to make himself heard over the commotion across the street. 

She let out a sigh of relief. "What happened?"

"I'll tell you, but let's get back in the car. It's a little quieter there."

The truth was, he wanted to get back to the scanner, so he could keep an ear out for any more likely calls. The woman had to be proof the paper existed in this version of Chicago. He had a lot of questions for her, whoever she was, but finding her again was going to be difficult. She could be headed just about anywhere, and, were he in her place, he wouldn't want to be followed by some stranger the way he was trying to follow her.

But he'd find her. He had to. He wanted to know what was going on with the paper. And Cat. And he really wanted to know why she hadn't stopped what happened to Marissa.

"I guess a Big Mac's out of the question," Chuck said wistfully as he climbed back into the driver's seat. He fixed Gary, who'd just tuned into another scanner channel, with a withering glare. "But we are not going anywhere until I find a Taco Town."

* * * * *


	17. Chapter 17

_The place I was wasn't perfect_   
_But I had found a way to live_   
_And it wasn't milk and honey_   
_But then neither is this_   
_~Sara Groves_

 

* * *

 

"Is it a good idea to let the cat hang out here?" Gary peered down at the furball in question, who sat under the table, fixing him with its unnerving glare. He and Chuck had moved to a booth to eat their meal and, if Gary was honest, to hide from Miss Clark and the rest of the curious staff. They ended up spending a couple hours there, dividing their attention between the baseball games on the televisions and the box scores in the newspaper for those same games. "I don't have to feed it, do I?"

"I think Marissa takes care of that." Chuck leaned out of the booth and looked around. "Good crowd tonight. There's no way this place is going under."

"Yeah, well, your books say otherwise."

"Not my books anymore, buddy." Chuck waved an arm, taking in the whole scene. "I mean, technically I still own half, but I traded all the stress of management for beaches, sun, and babes. Oh, and making a difference, of course. Quality family entertainment is—oh, hey, I love this song! Good choice!" He half stood and waved to the group of thirtysomethings clustered around the jukebox, then slid back onto the bench seat, nearly missing it.

"You are two sheets to the wind," Gary told him, glancing at the collection of glasses they'd emptied. He wasn't feeling so sharp himself. It was a welcome relief after the day he'd had. 

"More than two." Chuck held up four fingers and sang into his tumbler. "Domo arigato, Mister Roboto." He took another drink, then set the glass down long enough to do some robotic arm moves.

Gary laughed and shook his head. "I forgot you were a Styx fan."

"Are. I mean, am." Chuck dropped the robot act and shot Gary a quizzical look. "It's not like I died. Came close today, but, you know, not dead. Which is why we're celebrating, right?"

"That's what we're doing?" Gary frowned down at his own half-empty glass.

"That and diffusing your stress."

"You think that's what this is? I'm starting to wonder if it's not this place that's the hallucination. But if it is real, and I'm the one who's crazy, at least—" He pushed his thoughts past the guy who'd tried to shoot him so he could recall the clerk and the produce worker and the boy who hadn't drowned. "At least we did some good." 

"Yeah, we did, crazy hallucinations or not." Chuck nodded to himself. Then he burst out laughing.

"What?"

He looked at Gary with an oddly familiar gleam in his eyes. "If you're crazy, and I'm drunk, that makes us—"

"Two wild and crazy guys!" they chorused. It all came rushing back. Junior high. Adam Tripp's Halloween party. He and Chuck had borrowed two pairs of Bernie's golf pants and gone as the Czech brothers Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd played on _Saturday Night Live_. They'd strutted and yelled and cracked everyone up.

"We are looking for some foxy American girls!" Chuck called out, but it was too slurred to be a good impersonation of Steve Martin. "We will swing tonight! What now?" he said when he caught Gary staring at him.

"I missed you," Gary said, waggling two fingers between them. "This, you and me. I've missed it." He didn't add that, for all Chuck's drama when McGinty's had been sold, the real rift between them had been as much his own choice as his friend's. And that maybe he was starting to regret that choice, just a little.

"For the record, Gar, I've missed you too. Hollywood isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Gary still wasn't buying the Hollywood story, but at this point it was more fun to go along with it. "Not even the girls?"

"Not even the ones in bikinis. But man, they are something to see. I just wish I had you out there to see 'em with me."

Gary held up his glass. "To friendship."

"Friendship." Chuck clinked his glass against Gary's, then frowned, his glance darting to the end of the bar. Miss Clark was talking to the waitress who'd brought their food. Neither of them looked as if they were having much fun; their heads were bent, their faces serious. The waitress looked over at Gary and Chuck, then turned back to Miss Clark and told her—what? Did it even matter?

"Look, I know I should say I miss her too, but I don't even know her."

"No," Chuck said, and shook his head, dislodging the frown. "Doesn't seem like you do."

"Maybe I'd better smooth her feathers."

"Well," Chuck said into his glass, "she is the self-designated mother hen around here. No, wait. Don't."

Gary stood anyway. The room tilted in a pleasantly disorienting way. Chuck grabbed his arm, tugging him back down to his seat. "It's better if you let her cool off on her own. Really. I think. Hey, look at that." He pointed to the elevated part of the floor, where the firefighters were putting the pool cues back into the rack. "Want to play?"

Gary snorted. "You're so far gone, you don't stand a chance." 

"Yeah, you wish."

It was like McGinty's had never been torn down. Within minutes they were deep in the game, trading insults and sloppy shots. The pool cue felt right in Gary's hands, and he did a better job than Chuck of getting the balls in the pockets. He was up one game and winning a second, and somehow they'd acquired fresh drinks, when Chuck knocked Gary's elbow. "Cut it out, Chuck, you're screwing up my—oh. Hi." 

Miss Clark stood at the top of the steps, a giant purse slung over her shoulder. Her dog waited just below. "Chuck. Gary." Her voice was icier than the cubes in Gary's glass. "I'm going home. It's been a long few days, and everything that needs to be done around here is taken care of, at least as much as I can do." She took a deep breath. "Gary, I know you don't remember much, but there are some checks made out to our suppliers. I left them on your desk. Could you sign them?"

"Well, yeah, I could do that." Maybe that would make up for his manipulation of McGinty's accounts, though since they were apparently his accounts and the steps he'd taken would make the business stronger, he didn't see any reason to feel guilty about it.

"Thank you." She turned and made her way down the steps.

Gary blinked after her. Was she still upset? He glanced over at Chuck, who stood with his hands atop his pool cue, his brow furrowed. "Well, wait, you can't just—she can't just—" His thoughts wouldn't coalesce into words. "Can she?"

"Shit." Chuck let the cue fall and followed her down the short flight of steps to the main floor. The knot of people waiting for the pool table got out of their way, probably because of the dog. "Marissa. Hey." He wobbled as they reached the front door. "Don't go away mad."

That stopped her, and Gary caught up with the both of them. "I'm not mad, Chuck." She pressed her lips together and held onto the dog's harness with both hands. "I'm glad you guys are having fun. But my best friend doesn't seem to remember me, or want anything to do with me, so I think I'm allowed to be upset."

Gary had to grant her that one, though he didn't know what he was supposed to do to make it better. His silence seemed to seal the deal for her, and she took a step toward the door. "Hey, wait, it's dark," Gary realized. He looked too quickly from the front window back to Miss Clark, and the room swayed. "How are you getting home?"

"I'm driving," she said drily. But she reached into the front pocket of her purse and pulled out a CTA pass.

The room kept on swirling, and he put a hand on Chuck's conveniently lower shoulder to steady himself. "She can't just go by herself on the L, can she?"

" _She_ is right here," Miss Clark said. "And I do this all the time."

"But it isn't safe." Especially not for her. She should know that after—after what? A memory teased at the edge of his thoughts, but he couldn't grab onto it.

"Oh, and it would be safer with one of you? Your concern is sweet." She made a face that implied another taste. "But I'll be fine."

"I could get you a cab. I'm good at that." Chuck tried a spin move and knocked against the door handle. "Ow."

"Real graceful, Fishman." 

Gary turned at the gravelly voice and found Crumb standing just behind him.

"Hey, the gang's all here," Chuck said, oblivious to Crumb's scowl. "Now we can have a real party. We're celebrating, aren't we, Gar?"

Gary didn't answer. He had no real idea what was going on. 

Crumb looked at each of them in turn, then bent down and scratched the dog's head. "Hey there, Spike. Everything okay?" he asked Miss Clark.

She bit her lip. "I'm going home."

He shot Gary a look, as if he were waiting for him to jump in. But she'd already made it clear she didn't want Gary's help. "I'll give you a ride," Crumb finally said.

"But you just got here," Miss Clark said.

"Yeah, well, I'm not so sure I want to stay." The scowl that settled on his face made Gary and Chuck step aside, and he put a hand on Miss Clark's shoulder. "My car's out back."

"Couple of party poopers," Chuck groused. "Let's finish our game."

Gary watched them leave before he went back up to the pool table. "Was she serious?"

"She usually is." Chuck walked once around the table, ostensibly checking the layout, before he asked, "About what?"

"That 'best friend' stuff."

Chuck gave him an odd sideways look as he lined up his shot. "Damn," he muttered when the seven ball went wide of the pocket. "Look, Gar, there's a lot you don't remember. A lot we've all been through. It makes a difference."

"Yeah." Gary made his last shot, but the buzz had worn off and reality was sinking back in. How could he have friends like this and not know about them, let alone the mess that had happened with Marcia? And a magic newspaper, he thought, following Chuck's gaze to the copy of the _Sun-Times_ that lay on their table. And Marley, whoever the hell that was.

"Rack 'em up again?" Chuck asked.

"Nah." Gary picked up both their glasses and headed for the stairs. "I'm going to sign those checks, and then I think you'd better tell me about some of this stuff I've forgotten."

* * * * *

"So this is really what you do all day." Chuck snarfed the last of his taco and dropped the wrapper into the sack on the floor of the SUV. "Every day."

"Just about." Gary rubbed at his temple. The odor of Chuck's greasy food was aggravating his off-again, on-again headache. "Except I'm usually there before this stuff happens." 

They sat idling outside a Walgreens. Inside, a pair of EMTs were loading an older gentleman onto a gurney. It had been some kind of medical emergency; the dispatcher hadn't given out details on the radio, and without those or the paper Gary didn't know what had gone wrong. They'd arrived just after the ambulance, like he had at the jewelry store earlier. He'd gone inside, but he couldn't get close to the man. There'd been no sign of the lady with the stroller. 

He pushed buttons on the scanner, trying to find an active channel. "One more call."

"No." Chuck reached over and snatched the scanner out of Gary's hands. "No more calls. We're running around in circles, and I'm almost out of gas."

"It does seem kind of fruitless at this point." Marissa had her elbow propped up in the window well and was leaning her chin on her fist. "Won't most things that happen overnight be too late for the morning paper?"

"I've had later nights." Gary grabbed the scanner back from Chuck in time to hear the next call.

"All units, report of an armed robbery in progress at the Shell station on Damen and Augusta."

"That one."

Chuck fixed Gary with an expression that was way past his usual you're-pushing-it glare. 

"Come on. It's a few blocks from here. And the cashier probably has a gun in his face."

"Sounds like a great reason for us to stay away." A squad car passed them, sirens wailing. "See? All taken care of."

"I'm telling you, if we go there, we'll probably find her. The 911 call most likely came from outside the station, maybe from someone who knew what was going to happen."

"What makes you think that?" Chuck asked petulantly, but he put the SUV into gear and headed in the same direction as the cops.

"Because it's what Gary would do," Marissa said, as if she'd known all along and hadn't just set herself to figuring him out a few hours ago.

"How would you know?"

"She's right," Gary admitted. "At least, it's the first thing I'd try."

"Doesn't matter," Chuck said. "If the lady with your magic paper called it in, why would she stick around? She sure as hell didn't want to talk to you back at the fire. Ever stop to think she doesn't have tomorrow's subscription? Maybe she was just afraid of a strange man chasing her down the street."

A strange man with a lot of strange questions and at least one accusation. Back home, Gary would have been glad to know someone else got the paper. Still, this woman didn't know he could help, and if she was who he thought she was, he had a lot of questions for her that she wasn't going to like. "Maybe."

They cruised by the gas station. Beyond the flashing lights of the squad car, Gary could see two uniformed officers inside talking to the clerk. They didn't seem to be handcuffing anyone or ready to chase off after a suspect. 

"What'd I tell you?" Gary said. "The robbery didn't happen. She stopped it."

"You got that from two cops talking to the clerk?"

"He got that because he knows how this works," Marissa insisted. 

"Had to be a call from outside the store. Someone knew what was going to happen." But though Gary made Chuck pass by the parking lot twice more, he didn't see anyone near the pay phone on the corner, nor was there any sign of someone hanging around to see how things turned out.

"If she's smart, she made the call from the comfort of home," Chuck said. "Which is exactly what I would do."

Gary knew better. "They trace 911 calls. If you call from too far away, even from a pay phone, they're going to ask how you could know what's happening. They might think you were pulling a prank."

"You could become a suspect," Marissa said, in a slow voice that meant her wheels were turning. "But if she's new, she might not know everything you do. And if she has a baby to care for, she might not be able to do everything you would do. Maybe that's why she didn't stop some of the things you're wondering about."

"Nate died over a year ago," Gary pointed out. "She's had time to adjust to how this works." 

"During which time she would have given birth and cared for an infant."

That did seem like more than the paper should expect anyone to handle. "Maybe it went to someone else for a while." Gary slumped back in his seat. "I give up. If she's there, I don't see her."

"Maybe that's because she's not the person you're looking for," Chuck said.

Gary didn't entirely disagree with him. "But I recognized her. Not her, particularly, but the way she acted, making sure that little girl was safe."

"She was probably a gawker. Let's go home." Chuck grabbed the scanner again. This time, he turned it off and tossed it into the seat behind him, narrowly missing Marissa.

"Chuck," Gary started, but Chuck cut him off.

"This is getting us nowhere, and the later we're driving around these kinds of neighborhoods, the more likely it is one of those calls will be about us."

"What are you talking about?"

"We're in a Lexus, remember? Might as well have plates that say, 'Victim Here."'

"You're the one who offered to drive," Gary pointed out.

"And now I'm the one who wants to go home."

"Gary," Marissa said hesitantly. "It has been an awfully long day. Maybe if we all get some rest, we can think of a better way to do this."

Outnumbered, exhausted from pushing back the headache, Gary finally shrugged. "Okay, fine."

"Thank you," Chuck muttered. "So, Marissa, where are we taking you?"

She rattled off the address. "That's just a mile or so from here," Chuck said.

"Better hurry," Marissa said drily. "You don't want to drive your Lexus in this kind of neighborhood after dark."

* * * * *

Marissa hadn't told the whole truth about going home alone. Of course she could get there safely on the L. She'd been doing it for years, during the day all along, and at night now that she had Spike. What was also true was that she hadn't had to get home alone late at night for a quite a while, not since she'd come to work at McGinty's. Gary didn't let it happen. At first he'd made a lot of excuses: errands he had to run along the way, people he had to save in her neighborhood, or a need for exercise, as if running from one end of the city to the other all day long wasn't enough of a workout. She'd let him go on making up reasons for quite a while before she'd called him on it, just to see how many different ones he could invent.

But even after he'd owned up to it, he'd still insisted on taking her home as often as he could. Sometimes it was in his Jeep; sometimes he'd ride the L with her. The trips could get quiet when they were in the midst of a disagreement, but even when his company was grudging, the way he fretted about her getting home safe was a reminder that they'd eventually work out the problem, whatever it was. 

When Gary couldn't take her home, someone else often stepped in. Now that Chuck had left, it was usually Crumb. She wasn't sure whether Gary had ever put him up to it, but tonight it was all Crumb's doing. 

"Hobson wasn't in any shape to even walk you home, you know that, right?"

"He didn't make the offer. Not one that was serious, anyway." She buckled her seatbelt and took in Crumb's car: the scents of Old Spice and stale coffee, the shuffle of plastic bags and papers on the floor, the heavy clicks of the turn signal. 

"So, you're saying he wasn't himself?"

"Yes. I mean no, he's not himself." That was almost word-for-word what she'd tried to tell Chuck. She wondered if Crumb had any idea how thoroughly she meant it.

"Huh."

Spike's tags jingled and he let out a doggie sigh of contentment. He'd settled comfortably on the back seat when the car started forward. An uncharacteristic silence descended, but not the one Marissa thought of as the Not-So-Ex-Detective Silence that meant Crumb was observing her or plotting an interrogation, usually about Gary. She didn't feel watched at all. Something was definitely on his mind.

Driving with Crumb was usually different from driving with Gary, who had two speeds: "Got to get to the next thing in the paper," and "Too tired to find the gear shift." Crumb, on the other hand, made contained, crisp turns and steady stops and starts, so she could easily trace their path to her house. But not tonight. She wasn't even sure he was taking the usual route. He made a couple turns so quickly she wondered if he'd nearly missed them, and then he stomped on the brakes and laid on the horn. She lurched forward and gasped. 

"Whoops. Guy missed a four-way stop." His arm brushed against her when he reached toward Spike in the back seat. "You okay there, big guy?"

They started forward again; she could hear the beat of Spike's tail against the seat. "I think he's fine. How about you?"

"Me?"

"You were gone all afternoon and most of the night. Did you find out anything about the lecture, or about Gary?"

"I—yeah. I had to—" He broke off and cleared his throat. "Look, to be honest, I didn't like what I found out. Still don't."

"What do you mean?" The fear that she'd pushed away with her frustration and anger rushed back. "Was he hurt? Did something awful happen to him? I looked into all the possible psychological explanations, and every single one involves some kind of triggering event, a trauma or a brain injury. I hate to think that's what happened, but he's so different. He won't even talk to me. It's as if he can't stand to be in the same room as me." The way he'd moved her out of the way, as if she was an obstacle, had been especially hard to take.

"Hey." Crumb stopped the car, then stopped her rambling with a hand on her arm. "I don't know what to think about what I found out, but one thing I know for sure is that it'd take a lot more than a whack on the head to make Hobson stop caring about you. The way he's been acting around you is the only thing that makes me even consider this."

She wondered how much he had seen, and how much the staff had told him. She'd let them know Gary was having trouble remembering things so they wouldn't bother him with managerial issues, but she should have had better control over her own emotions before she'd talked to Sarah. She was afraid now that she'd let too much slip. "Consider what?"

Crumb's hand tightened around her arm in a way that it almost never did. Not unless something was very wrong. "You're not going to like it. Personally, I loathe it. Want to kick it to the curb and bust its ass, if you'll pardon my French. But even though it's impossible, it actually makes a weird kind of sense. Or at least as much sense as anything around Hobson ever does."

"What are you saying?"

"He's not acting like himself." Crumb withdrew his hand and sucked in a long breath. "I'm starting to think that's because he's _not_ himself. And I ain't talking in semaphores."

"I didn't think you were." She jumped halfway out of her seat when someone pounded on the roof of the car and yelled hello to Crumb. It was as if a switch had been turned on. Suddenly she noticed a low jumble of voices and music and the scent of cigarette smoke. "Where are we?"

"Ira's. It's a cop bar. Which, I know we just left a bar, but McGinty's didn't seem like the best place to talk."

"And this is?"

He let out a gruff laugh. "Yeah, actually. We all swear we're not going to talk shop after hours, but of course we do. Most of it is stuff that's not supposed to go public, so nobody openly listens to what's going on at other people's tables. Professional courtesy. Plus, half the guys in there started out in my precinct. They know better than to interrupt when I'm chatting with a classy lady. So what do you say, can I buy you a drink?"

As tired as she was, she really wanted to know what he'd learned and why he was so hell-bent on avoiding it. She unlocked her seatbelt. "What about Spike?"

"Bring him along. Anybody gives you a hard time, you tell them he's K-9."

* * * * *

Gary walked Marissa to the front door of her apartment building. He could see Frank staring down from a lit window on the second floor. Marissa hesitated before inserting her key in the lock. "Are you going to be okay tonight?"

"Chuck said I could sleep on his couch."

"That's not what I meant." She rubbed the key with her thumb. "You aren't lost, you know."

Funny, that was pretty much exactly what he'd been thinking. He was used to making sure Marissa got home okay, but nothing about this felt right. This wasn't where she was supposed to live, Frank or no Frank, and he was supposed to be headed back to his loft above McGinty's after a day full of helping people, not sacking out on the sofa of a Chuck who still seemed more than half-ticked at him. And while he'd found out a few things, most of the day had consisted of exactly the kind of fruitless chasing around Chuck had complained about. 

"You sure about that?" he asked Marissa.

"I'm sure." She smiled. "You know where you are. You know where you want to go. You just don't know how to get there. It's not the same as being lost." 

"Is it still true what you said?" Gary ventured. "About wanting to be part of something magic?"

"I said that about your friend."

"What about you?"

"I'm still here." The door buzzed. "Frank," they both said together. 

Gary pulled the door open. "You know, if I'm not lost, it's because you took a chance on me today. Thanks."

She nodded. "I think we both needed a little faith. Call me in the morning?"

"You got it."

Gary fished the scanner out of the back of the SUV before he buckled into the passenger seat. 

"Gar, c'mon," Chuck said in a warning tone.

"I just want to listen in, okay? Maybe I can figure out a pattern or something." He switched it on, but turned the sound down low.

"Or maybe you can drive us both nuts. Gotta say, I never figured you for a voyeur."

"No, you just figured me for a scumbag who betrayed you somehow. You know I'm not that guy, right?" Gary looked over at Chuck, who stared straight out the windshield as though he needed every ounce of concentration to steer them home. "Marissa believes me."

Chuck's jaw worked. "She tell you what happened to her?"

"Yeah, she did, which is why I need to find the paper. Something's gone wrong if no one tried to stop that."

Finally, Chuck spared him a glance. "You know, this is a classic—textbook, even—guilt-induced fugue, manifesting as a hero complex, complete with paranoid delusions of grandeur."

"Oh, now you have a psych degree?"

"I could use one, given what I've had to deal with today." They were stopped at a light, and Chuck drummed his fingers on the wheel, almost in time to the calls on the scanner. "You sure you don't want to go pick up your car?"

"I don't need the car, but I do need the duffle bag that's in it. It's got my clothes. Or his clothes. Someone's clothes. The car's better off in the garage, unless you have an extra space."

"You're okay with leaving a BMW 320 in a downtown garage overnight?"

"Where else would I leave it? It'll be fine."

"Maybe you really are a different person." Chuck made a turn without signaling, ignoring the honks that sounded in response. "You've seen Ferris Bueller, right? Hope you know the mileage on that thing."

"It doesn't matter." The police calls had hit a lull. A lot of the channels were just chatter between the dispatchers and the cops on duty. Gary shut the scanner off. What mattered was finding the paper and setting everyone here straight. If he could do that, he could go home. 

 


	18. Chapter 18

_What matters, what's at the heart of the subject, is whether there exist realms that challenge convention by suggesting that what we've long thought to be the universe is only one component of a far grander, perhaps far stranger, and mostly hidden reality…It's at once humbling and stirring to imagine just how expansive reality may be._  
_~Brian Green_

 

* * *

Marissa chased condensation around the bowl of her wine glass with a fingertip, letting what Crumb had said sink in. "Wow."

"I know."

"I mean—that's—"

"I know. Be right back."

He went for more drinks. She was halfway through her second wine spritzer, which was making her feel a little numb and tasted surprisingly good, especially for a place where Crumb's first order had been for someone to turn off the television blaring _Sports Center_ right over their table. But then, the fact she was with Crumb probably accounted for the quality of the drink. Given the way everyone, including the bartender, had greeted him by name, she figured they probably kept a bottle of decent pinot grigio with his name on it stashed behind the counter for his dates. Crumb was drinking something stronger—bourbon, from the smell of it—and he'd had quite a bit more than she had. It had taken at least three glasses of it for him to choke his story out.

Not that she blamed him. It was hard enough for her to absorb what he'd told her. She couldn't imagine what it had taken for Crumb to even hear the theory, let alone extrapolate it to encompass what might have happened to Gary. She didn't trust her own reaction either, but for a different reason. 

Reason enough to down the rest of her drink in one gulp, just before Crumb set a fresh one next to her hand.

His chair creaked and he clonked his glass on the table. "I went in thinking the prof might tell me that Hobson'd been knocked on the head somehow. Worst case, that he'd gotten some kind of, I don't know, psychological radiation sickness from whatever they were messing with. You know how scientists are."

In B-movies, Marissa thought, but not at the U of Chicago. "I doubt there would have been anything that dangerous at a lecture in the business center."

"Maybe not, but we're running out of leads, here. When Stinton laughed me out of his lab, I thought I'd hit another dead end. Then those grad students followed me with their story and their nutso theory." Something hit the table; not a glass, maybe his hand. "I didn't know what to think. Spent most of the afternoon at the station house, going through every call I could find from that day looking for some trace of Hobson, trying to convince myself there was no way they were right."

She wished he'd told her sooner, though she understood why he hadn't. "The thing is, it makes a strange kind of sense."

"Very strange. I mean, from what I could tell, the lecture was about some kind of special new computer that works with atoms or particulates, or...I dunno, super small stuff. How that makes it able to do calculations at the speed of light, I have no idea, and I figured I didn't need to know. But then these kids come at me with the idea that the computer had somehow switched out Hobson for his twin, even though their professor claimed it didn't work." He snorted. "I'm as open-minded as the next guy, but gangs of dopplers? Perpendicular universes? It sounded like something Fishman would pitch to a low-rent cable channel."

Part of Marissa's brain translated terms from Crumbese—particles, probably, and parallel universes—so she could use them in a web search later. The rest was absorbed in trying to find the flaws in this possibility. "You're sure the computer doesn't work?"

Crumb leaned in close, and if she hadn't already been lightheaded from the wine, the bourbon fumes would have pushed her over the edge. "The professor says it doesn't. In this universe. But if it works in some other universe that's enough like ours that there's a Chicago, and a Hobson, and a you and a me and a Fishman, those students think it could have happened. They swear they saw Hobson coming down the stairs in a plaid shirt, and then he tripped and got up and was wearing a business suit. One of 'em, Anil, said there was shaking and a blur."

"A blur." She couldn't believe this based on a blur. It would be too easy. "There was a blur, and Gary switched places with another version of himself?" 

Crumb's only answer was a long gulp. 

"It would explain why his memories are different," she said slowly, waiting for Crumb to contradict her. "Why _he's_ so different." So different he'd used the paper to play the market; so different he didn't even want to be in the same room with her. She swallowed back more of the wine before the numbness could wear off. 

"There's got to be some other reason," Crumb groused.

But this one felt right. If there was one thing two years with Gary and his not-normal life had taught her, it was that anything was possible, not just prophetic papers and immortal cats, but ghosts and time travel and visions, and a force that used willing human helpers to change lives for the better. Maybe this was just another instance of God working a miracle to get something done, much as it didn't feel like a miracle at the moment.

"It is Gary we're talking about," she said. "You know how strange his life can get. A few months ago, when he was knocked on the head at that construction site, he told me an incredible story about what happened to him."

"Do I want to hear this?"

"He went back in time."

Crumb's guffaw made her jump. "I definitely do not want to hear this."

"If that could happen, why not this? Those students don't think it's impossible." She shook her head, trying to dislodge her fuzzy thoughts. "Did they say if Gary had a—"

"Marissa, don't. Please."

"—cat," she finished, though that hadn't been what she'd meant to say. "Did they say if Gary's cat was with him?"

"Matter of fact, yeah. Anil mentioned a cat that showed up in the lecture hall when Hobson fell down the stairs. 'Course, it disappeared when Hobson magically changed clothes."

"Of course it did." She sat back, trying to rub the goosebumps off her arms. "That's what happened. It has to be."

"No, now wait. I told you this because I want you to talk me out of it."

"You should have known better." And she should know better than to buy it. She was high on wine and confused by fumes from bourbon and stale beer and cigarettes; she was tired and worn down; she wanted the man who'd snapped at her and shut her out to be someone other than the Gary Hobson she knew. 

"I guess. It would explain why he thinks I oughta be dead." Crumb sighed. "If this is the afterlife, it's way too much work. Much rather be fishing in Idaho."

Marissa reached across the table. Her throat felt clogged, and not only from the spritzer. "You _shouldn't_ be dead. And Gary shouldn't be so lost in his own life."

"He shouldn't be an ass to you, is what he shouldn't be."

"He had a rough day." Especially if this wasn't his life.

"Still." Crumb gave her hand a pat. "I need coffee if I'm gonna get you home safe. You want some?"

She shook her head and reached down to scratch behind Spike's ears while Crumb made one more trip to the bar. A man at a nearby table intercepted him, and he stopped long enough to trade speculation about who the next guy from the precinct to make detective was going to be. Marissa half-listened, her thoughts running down an entirely different track.

Spike plopped his head on her feet. "I know it's late," she told him. "We'll go home soon." She reached for her St. Jude medal and rubbed its worn surface. 

The man who was hanging out with Chuck, fumbling his way around the paper and McGinty's, wasn't Gary. Not _her_ Gary, not the Gary who was supposed to be with them in this Chicago. In this universe. She'd pushed the paper and the bar at him, pushed herself at him. No wonder he'd been so eager to avoid her. But it begged the question: why was he here? If this was the paper's idea of a joke, it wasn't funny.

Actually, it begged more than one question. Her breath caught in her lungs.

Crumb came back and sat down. The scent of coffee, heavily roasted, covered up the bourbon and beer. "Told you we can't resist shop talk." 

Marissa reached for her wine glass, but her hand shook, and she set it down without taking a drink. "That's all right."

"Huh." This time, the brief silence was his Not-So-Ex-Detective Silence. He cleared his throat. "I'd ask if you're okay, but I know you aren't." He slurped at his coffee. "I know I'm not."

"No. But I'm glad you told me." She forced a couple of calming breaths, bracing herself before she asked the question that mattered more than all the others. "Crumb, if that really isn't the Gary we know, where did our Gary go?"

Crumb's voice still held a note of derision, not for her, but for the whole messed-up situation. "According to Anil and Ryan, he went wherever the other one came from."

The thought of the Gary she knew stuck in a place where he didn't get the paper, where there wasn't a McGinty's and he didn't know his friends and they didn't know him, was like ice water down her back, a wake-up call that set her brain racing to solve a brand new problem. "How do we get him back?"

* * * * *

The crowd at McGinty's thinned, but the stories flew thick and fast. Gary claimed he wanted to hear more about his life with the paper, and Chuck told him plenty. He tried to stick to the good stuff, the stories where everything came out okay. He avoided things like JoJo's death, lost loves, and anything that included abject humiliation on his own part. And J.T. Marley. If trauma and stress had made Gar flip out, Chuck didn't think the story of Marley and his attempt to frame Gary for a presidential assassination was going to flip him home. But somehow, as the night wore on and Gary's memories about the past couple years refused to line up with Chuck's, they took a conversational detour and ended up talking about old times and events they both remembered the same way.

Well, mostly the same.

"There was that one time in eighth grade science when Mrs. Hanson gave us cow eyes to dissect." Chuck sat slumped in a booth, feet up on the opposite bench. Gary hunched over yet another gin and tonic, one that Chuck had mixed himself. Right around the time Marissa left, Sarah had stopped coming by to refill their drinks and assorted munchies, and A.J. had started giving them the stink eye. Chuck didn't know what their problem was. It wasn't like he and Gary were loud or sloppy drunks. They were coping via alcohol, just like everybody else in the bar. 

Gary grinned. "I remember you waited until her back was turned, grabbed two of them, and stuck them in front of your eyes." He plucked two ice cubes out of his glass and demonstrated. "And then Janice—what was her last name?"

"Janice Radowski," Chuck said. "She snort-laughed so hard my heart stopped."

Gary dropped the ice cubes in an empty glass. "Oh, man, the way you jumped. Those eyes squished out of your hands."

"They were slippery!"

"They went flying across the room. Hit Mrs. Hanson right on the chest and stuck to her shirt."

"One landed in her hair," Chuck flapped his hands around his face. "Remember how she had the Farrah Fawcett look, with her hair in those…wajacallit…wings?"

"Nah, they both landed on her chest. Which we were never supposed to look at, of course, but hell, we were thirteen." Gary shook his head, still grinning like a maniac. "I will never forget the look on her face. Or yours."

"My promising career as a scientist cut short. And at such a tender age." Chuck tossed off the comment while his mind tossed around what Gary had said. He had a very clear picture of one cow eye lodged in Mrs. Hanson's hair. God, he'd had a crush on that hair. The eye had slipped out and squelched on the floor halfway through her rant about lab safety and the cost of those specimens. Weird that he and Gary didn't remember the same details, but it wasn't that big a deal. It'd been more than twenty years ago.

Whatever was going on inside that thick skull, this was the Gary he missed, had been missing for most of the two years since the paper had shown up in their lives. Maybe even before that, when things got rocky with Marcia. Gary'd never talked about it, really, but Chuck knew Marcia had made him pay for nights out with the guys. For Cubs games, and pickup hoops at the Y, and just about everything else Gary actually enjoyed. For having a heart. She'd read him the riot act for skipping work to go to Marissa's grandmother's funeral, and that was before the paper had come. And Gar, well, he didn't have that kind of fight in him, especially with Marcia. He'd trade insults with Chuck, but he was totally conflict-avoidant when it came to the tough stuff. It hadn't surprised Chuck that Gary was surprised when Marcia threw him out.

Then the paper came, and everything had turned serious. Marissa had put the smackdown on using the paper for anything but goody-goodness. Not that Gary had needed any nagging to do the right thing, even when it was damned near impossible. Maybe that was why he'd cracked now and built up all these false memories of keeping his job and staying married to Marcia. It made a lot more sense than a newspaper that told the future.

Except. 

Except the paper was real, unless Chuck had dreamed most of the past day and the two years before that.

Except he'd learned that what made sense wasn't always real, especially in Hollywood, and therefore it wasn't always smart to put faith in logic.

Except Gary seemed to be misremembering stuff that had nothing to do with the past two years. 

"Hey, Gar? Yesterday, when Marcia was here?" Gary winced, and Chuck hurried on. "You said you gave up football for her."

"You know I did."

"When? I was trying to remember."

"Sophomore year of college, right after I met her." He leaned even farther forward. Chuck didn't know if he was upping the intensity, of if he just couldn't sit up straight anymore. "Is this some kind of test?"

"Nah, man." Gary had played all four years at Northwestern. Chuck _knew_ he had. He remembered the fights Gary and Marcia had had about it, how Marcia had said it was a waste of time because he would never go pro, and how Gary had said that just meant it was more important that he did play while he could. "I'm just wondering which of us doesn't have all our marbles."

"Ha." Gary's face was so close to the surface of the table his laugh sprayed a puddle of condensation onto Chuck's hand. "Clearly it's you."

"Can I remind you where we're having this discussion? The bar you claim to have personally dismantled?"

"Yeah, but you, a Hollywood producer?"

He pulled out his driver's license with some difficulty and stuck it in Gary's face. "This says California, not Illinois."

Gary stared at it, then slumped all the way forward, burying his head in his arms and muffling his next question. "Am I really not married to Marcia?"

Why couldn't he let that, of all things, go? His devotion to Marcia was the one thing Chuck hadn't missed in the past few years. Too bad Marissa had gone off in a huff. She'd know how to handle this. "Not anymore, buddy."

"She was so cold yesterday."

Chuck popped open a peanut and flicked the shell at the top of Gary's head. "She's always been cold."

"No, she hasn't." Gary lifted his head, and his frown faded into a goofy grin. "She may not be your biggest fan, but she has a heart. She has to hide it for her job sometimes, but it's there."

"Yeah, sure, unless she's pitching all your stuff out a window."

"I don't remember that." Gary sat back in the booth and waved his empty glass at Sarah, who fixed them both with a pointed glare and marched past their table without a word. "Man, I feel like every woman in the world is mad at me right now." 

"Haven't you learned anything about women after all these years watching me?"

"Oh, yeah, you've been so successful. Like that publicist you dated right after college. What was her name?"

"Beth Gardner?"

"No, Michelle Alvarez. Long dark hair, always had high heels and a slit in her skirt?"

"I never dated her. Asked her out more than once, but she always said she had to wash her hair or get her nails done." Things would have turned out a lot differently, Chuck thought wistfully, if she'd just given him a chance.

"You guys doubled with Marcia and me that New Year's after we got engaged. You had holes in your shoes because she kept stabbing you with her stilettos. Marcia had too much champagne, and I had to hold back her hair..." He trailed off, lost in a memory. Why he wanted it to be that memory was beyond Chuck.

"Earth to Gar." He waved his hand in Gary's face. "Trust me, if Michelle had ever looked twice at me, I would remember."

They frowned at each other over their nearly empty glasses.

"I swear—" Gary said.

"I know," Chuck said at the same time.

"Something happened to her," Gary finished.

"To Marcia? Yeah, she lost her mind and dumped the kind of guy every woman dreams about. She told me that once, you know."

"That you'd lost your mind?"

"Nope, the other thing. On your wedding day, she got drunk enough to actually talk to me. She said you were the kind of guy any woman would be thrilled to have. Like you were a collector's item."

"Marcia isn't just any woman."

"Maybe she dumped you because she needed a new trophy."

"She tell you that too?" Gary asked with a scowl.

"Nah, I'm just joshing. You said yourself the two of you were going in different directions. What?"

Gary had frozen with his glass half-raised, staring at the bar. "Something happened to her," he repeated.

"We've established that."

"Not Marcia. Miss Clark." He blinked bloodshot eyes at Chuck. "That's why she's mad at me, isn't it? Because I don't remember it now, or maybe because I didn't do anything when it happened. But I didn't know anything about her then. Still don't, really."

"What are you talking about?"

Gary sat up a little straighter, eyes lighting up. "I remember something recent. Back this past spring, right? I mean, she's always at that desk, and then one day she wasn't, and Pritchard's secretary was all upset and said something about Miss Clark being in the hospital. I didn't pay much attention because I had four different client meetings that day."

"She was in the hospital, yeah." Chuck checked to make sure no one was listening and lowered his voice. "It was the mummy's curse, remember?"

"How much have you had to drink?" Gary's question came out with a laugh. "It wasn't a mummy. It was a mugging, right?"

Chuck's stomach tightened, and not from booze and peanuts. "I'm telling you, it was a mummy. That guy she was dating stole some emeralds and hexed her. Not to mention me. We had that epidemic-plague thing straight out of Exodus until you reversed the curse."

"My brain may be all wonky, but there's no way I'm going to believe _that_. It was a mugging. The kind of thing that happens every day."

"Not to Marissa it doesn't. Not with you around." Gary'd taken it hard enough when Marissa was sick; hell, it hadn't been much fun for Chuck, either. He hated to think what it would have been like for all three of them if she'd been hurt by something Gary should have been able to prevent. 

Bits and pieces of the past two days came back to Chuck: the way Gary had asked Marissa to do his grunt work, then brushed her aside; the way he'd given her crap behind her back, which he'd nearly killed Chuck for doing more than once before; the way he himself had gone along with it. They made a picture he really didn't like. "Gary, listen, I like Marissa when she's not nagging at me, but with you, it's more." 

Gary gaped at him. "Are you saying we—no, no way. I'm in love with _Marcia_."

"No! God, not that," Chuck said hurriedly. "It's like Marissa's your sister or something."

That wasn't quite right, but it was enough to turn Gary's expression into more of a frown. "Younger or older?"

"Little bit of both, I guess. Look, I know you don't remember, but before I left, we all took care of each other, and as far as I know, after I left, you two still do. Or did." He shook his head. "No matter how annoying she can be, I'm sure whatever's happened to you isn't her fault."

"I know that." Gary scowled down at his drink, but Chuck read guilt in his expression. "Just because I'm not best friends with the blind receptionist, that doesn't make me a bad guy."

"You're not a bad guy. And she's not the receptionist or Miss Clark. She's Marissa." As much fun as he'd had tonight, the look on her face when she'd left wasn't sitting well with Chuck. "Maybe you should start there."

Gary blinked at him, looking more confused than a vegetarian at a ribfest. "Okay, I guess."

"Don't worry, buddy. I'll help you figure it out." Chuck slid out of the booth and stretched. He wasn't sure he wanted to think much harder about what might have thrown Gary so far off track, or about what he should be doing to get him back. The day had been long enough already. He picked up as many glasses as he could hold and nodded toward the bar. "Let's help them clean up. Maybe that'll get us back on their good side."

* * * * *

"Nice place," Gary said when Chuck turned on the lights in his apartment. Unlike Marissa, this Chuck lived in the same building as the one Gary knew. The living room was decorated with the same style of black leather furniture and the same huge television. He held up the scanner. "Where do I plug this thing in?"

Chuck rolled his eyes and tossed his keys on the kitchen counter. "Give it a rest."

"I have to charge it for tomorrow."

"Oh, why, so you can keep showing up too late to help anybody and wallow in the fact there's nothing you can do about it? I don't want to stick around for that show." Chuck leveled a hard stare at Gary. "You know you're only here because Marissa told me I had to take you in. That woman will not take no for an answer."

"Yeah. Thanks." Gary fished the charging cord out of the scanner's box and pulled chairs and a case of CDs and videotapes away from the wall. He finally found a free outlet behind one end of the sofa and crawled on his hands and knees to plug in the charger. When he sat back, he found Chuck standing over him, waving a remote.

"This is my spot. Shoo." Chuck vaulted onto the couch. " _Cheers_ rerun or _Sports Center_?"

Gary put the scanner on the glass-topped coffee table. "News. The local news." He dropped into a black leather armchair. 

Chuck muttered something under his breath, tossed the remote to Gary and went into the kitchenette. "I need a beer. You want one?"

"Sure." Gary surfed channels until he found a newscast, which he watched with an ever-sinking feeling. Most of what they reported about the evening, he'd heard on the scanner, but plenty had happened before then. He didn't often watch the local news at night—by then he'd done everything he could—but he didn't remember the list of accidents, shootings, robberies, and fires taking up so much time that there was only a two-minute block left for weather, and five for sports. When the inexplicably still-cheerful newscasters signed off, Chuck was well into his second beer, but Gary's first was collecting condensation on his knee.

He tossed the remote to Chuck and reached over to play with the switch on the scanner, but didn't actually turn it on. 

"Let it go." Chuck scrolled through the channels so fast there was no way he could tell what was on any given network. "Like I said, whatever you hear, there's nothing you can do." He finally stopped surfing, ending up, predictably, on ESPN, which was all chatter about pennant races, the U.S. Open, and the College World Series.

Gary tapped on the scanner, thinking. He had to find the paper, and he needed Chuck on his side. There was one sure way to make that happen. He felt a brief spasm of guilt; what he was about to say would lead down a path he'd spent two years trying to steer Chuck away from. Marissa was going to hate it. But he couldn't take another day of Chuck's doubt and grudging, half-hearted help. 

"You know," he said, gesturing at the television with his beer bottle, "when I get the paper, I get the complete paper. Local, national, want ads. Sports."

Chuck shrugged, his eyes half-closed. "So, what, you get a jump on clipping coupons?"

Gary turned the bottle in his hands. "I don't pay much attention to those. Or sports. Kills the fun of watching a game if I know the box score. But if I'm too busy to catch a game anyway, I'll check those out." 

It took a few seconds, maybe because of the beer, or maybe Chuck really was that tired. Then it hit home. He swung his legs to the floor and turned to face Gary. "I can see where that would come in handy," he said slowly. 

Gary lifted an eyebrow. "You can?"

Chuck nodded. "You definitely need to find that paper."

Gary sat back, finally taking a long pull of his beer. "That's all I'm saying."

"We'll go back out tomorrow. I have a map around here somewhere, that oughta help. Maybe we should check the betting parlors. Just in case whoever gets the paper has the same idea."

"Just in case," Gary echoed. He knew they wouldn't find the woman with the stroller at any of Chuck's haunts, but if it would get Chuck moving, it'd be worth letting him take a look. A very quick look.

Once _Sports Center_ was over, Chuck gave him a pillow and blanket and went to bed. Gary spent another hour re-reading _Lost Chicago_ , but if there were answers there, he couldn't find them. He turned off the lights and lay awake for a while after that, listening to Chuck's snores and the hum of traffic far below. Finally, he turned on the scanner at low volume. The refrain of trouble haunted him most of the night, as did Chuck's words: "Nothing you can do."

* * * * *


	19. Chapter 19

_Thinking about quantum physics is like unraveling your brain and putting it back together again upside down._  
~Rebecca Pidgeon

 

* * *

Marissa arrived at McGinty's at the same time the kitchen staff got there to do prep work, over an hour after her usual start time. She figured she'd earned a late morning. After settling Spike in his corner in the office, she took inventory of the desks. The checks she'd left for Gary to sign were gone, and there were stamped envelopes in the outbox. This Gary's signature wasn't technically valid, but she doubted any of their suppliers or the bank would call them on it. She went online to make sure yesterday's deposits had been recorded, but the account totals didn't line up with what she remembered. 

Upstairs, floorboards creaked and water ran, reminding her that though McGinty's owner was gone, his silent partner was back, already misusing the paper for his own gain. She buried her head in her hands for a moment. If Chuck had undone any of the fixes she'd had to put in place after he left their finances in a mess, she'd kill him. But she was too brain dead to figure it all out before coffee, and this really wasn't the time to freak out about money. Now that the guys were up, she needed to confront them with more than their bank balance.

Out in the kitchen she said good morning to the cooks and asked Tim how the wedding plans were going, then snagged a full pot of coffee and three mugs. She took them out to the dining area and settled in at a corner booth. The staff knew better than to interrupt what Chuck had always called their morning war councils. She'd never really liked the name, but maybe it fit after last night. 

She was halfway through her first cup of coffee when a set of footsteps braved her bubble. "Hey," Chuck said, and dropped onto the seat across from her. 

"Good morning." She heard the newspaper land on the table and reached for it. 

"It's not in Braille."

"I know." She ran her fingers over the paper anyway. Smooth as always. "It's tomorrow's?"

"Unh-huh." His voice was a little bubbly, as though it were coming through water or slush. "Last night—"

"Coffee first." She pushed the pot and a mug across the table.

He grunted, and she waited while he poured and took a swig, swallowing loudly as a bullfrog. "You," he said in a much clearer voice. "Goddess. Is you. Marissa Clark, Goddess of Coffee." 

"I figured you'd need it after last night."

"Yeah, about that." His mug clinked on the table. "We took things too far. I was trying to get Gary to relax and remember, but it didn't exactly work."

"No, it didn't. Did you guys mess around with the paper again?"

"He doesn't want anything to do with it."

"What about our bank account?"

" _Our_ account?"

"McGinty's." Marissa chose, for now, to ignore the implication that the bar wasn't hers; she might not be an owner, but she'd invested more time and work into the place than Chuck had lately. She figured that made them even. "He was on our computer after you guys got back yesterday. He didn't say anything about our finances, did he?"

"Nope."

"You're sure?"

"We played pool, talked about old times, pissed you off. You know, the usual stuff you do when your best friend is dealing with the demands of a magic newspaper by losing his mind." He'd been paging through the paper, but now he stopped. "Except for the pissing you off part. Shouldn't have done that."

As Chuck-pologies went, it was extensive. She hadn't been pissed, though; she'd been hurt. Chuck might not understand the difference. "I know a little better why you did, now," she said. She wasn't sure she should go further with this until her audience was complete. "Is Gary up?"

"Barely, but yeah." He poured more coffee into his cup and warmed up hers.

She nodded toward the paper. "Anything this morning?"

"Not 'til ten-thirty." He took another loud swallow, and when she didn't say anything, asked, "What?"

"What what?" she asked, stalling.

"You're sitting there tapping on your mug like you're trying to play piano on it instead of drinking your coffee, which you look like you need at least as much as I do, though I'm not sure how that's possible. What gives?"

She sipped at her coffee instead of telling him. But Cat brushed her ankle, then jumped up on the booth next to her. "Hey, kitty," Chuck cooed, as though he thought he had to reconcile with Cat as well. "How's our best little buddy?"

"Reee-ow!" Cat snarled in Chuck's direction, then put a paw in Marissa's lap and rubbed its head against her arm. He let out a long, low purr when she gathered him into her lap. His weight and warmth made it easier for her to begin.

"Crumb took me to a bar last night," she told Chuck.

"What, like a date?" he scoffed.

She dug her fingers a little deeper into Cat's fur. "Like he couldn't bring himself to tell me what he found out about what had happened to Gary without half a bottle of Maker's Mark in his bloodstream." 

"He knows what happened? I was right, wasn't I?" The caffeine must have hit Chuck's system; he suddenly sounded a lot more animated. "He has amnesia, and we have to hit him on the head to reverse it."

"Will you stop that? No one is hitting anyone."

"It's a little late for that."

"That's just it, isn't it? The Gary we know would never hit you." She took a breath. "He's not himself. That's what you said, and so did Crumb. We were all thinking it." Cat pushed his head into the crook of her elbow. "Even Cat." Could Cat get to the Gary who was supposed to be here? Marissa still wasn't sure if Cat had made the switch possible, or if he'd just been caught up in it, as lost as the rest of them.

"And?" Chuck prompted.

"And it turns out it was true. Literally." She gave the scruff of Cat's neck a little squeeze as she waited for Chuck's response.

"Look, I don't know how much experience you've had with a little thing I like to call a 'hangover', but for me, it tends to mess with my thinking, no matter how much coffee you pour in me. You've gotta make a lot more sense if you want me to follow." 

"Gary. Is not. Himself. He's Gary, but he's not the Gary we know. And it doesn't have anything to do with amnesia. Nothing happened to traumatize or hurt him, not until he switched places with—"

"Gary," Chuck interjected.

"Yes, Gary."

"No, Gary. As in, 'Good morning, Gary, there you are, how long a shower did you need, exactly? 'Cause that one must have set some kind of record.'" There was a grunt, movement; Chuck shifted, and another body slid onto the bench across from her. 

Marissa shook her head at her own lapse. She hadn't even heard him walk into the bar. "Hey, Gary," she said, a little warily. She wasn't entirely comfortable calling him Gary. If she needed any confirmation of what Crumb had told her, she found it in Cat, who let out a confused mewl, but made no attempt to go to the guy who was supposed to be his caretaker.

"Morning, Miss Clar—uh, Marissa." He sounded equally cautious. She pasted on a smile that never would have fooled the Gary she knew and pushed the third mug his way. Like Chuck, he poured and drank coffee before he said anything else, but when he did, it was fervent. " _Bless_ you." A foot brushed against hers. Chuck nudging Gary, she guessed, because Gary went on, "And I just want to say, I—uh—I mean, it's not because of the coffee, or not only because of it, but I've been kind of a jerk. I was looking for someone to blame, but it isn't you." The last few words were barely audible. "Whatever's going on here, it's not your fault, and I know that. I'm normally not a bad guy."

"I don't think you are." She took a deep breath and told him what she'd realized last night, what she needed to tell both Garys, though for different reasons. "It's just as much my fault as yours. I pushed you too hard."

"Maybe, maybe not," Gary said. "After you left last night, I remembered what happened to you this spring."

"Gar, no," Chuck warned.

"This spring?"

"The mugging."

"Mummy," Chuck corrected him. Marissa pulled Cat a little closer.

"Mugging," Gary insisted. "I'm sorry I didn't come to the hospital or send flowers or anything. I should have, I know. Chuck said I shouldn't say this, but I am sorry. For that and for everything else."

All Marissa's whirling anxiety receded for a moment, leaving a still, small terror. That mugging must have happened to someone very much like her, the version of her who lived where this Gary came from. When she'd been sick, Gary had been there, risking his life to find a cure and hanging around her hospital room through her recovery. She always knew, no matter how bad things got, that he'd show up and make them better. She counted on that, maybe too much, and to have that taken away, to never have had it at all, would have made her life very different.

"You don't have to apologize for that," she said. "Not to me, anyway."

"What's that mean?" Gary asked.

Marissa took a deep breath. "You need to apologize to the Marissa who was mugged."

After a moment of dead silence, Chuck said, "You have to start making sense."

"I don't know how much sense it's going to make, at least at first. Gary, you were right."

"He was?" Chuck asked.

"About what?" Gary asked.

"Almost everything." She unwrapped one arm from around Cat and reached for the paper. " _You_ don't own this bar. _You_ didn't get the paper until a couple days ago. For all I know, you are still married to Marcia."

"Whoa, Marissa, back up the crazy train," Chuck said.

"It isn't crazy." She gestured toward Gary. "He's not Gary Hobson. He's _a_ Gary Hobson, but not the one we know."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Chuck demanded.

"No, no, it makes sense to me," Gary said.

"Of course it does," Chuck said, exasperated. "You've got scrambled eggs for brains right now."

"No, he doesn't," Marissa insisted. "That's what I'm trying to tell you."

"Then what happened to him?" Chuck demanded.

"Science. And the paper. A little of both. I think it's some kind of magic."

"Oh, thank you, Sabrina. That explains everything."

"Cut it out, Chuck, I want to hear this," Gary said.

"Crumb talked to a professor at the U of Chicago," she told them. "Apparently, this all has to do with quantum physics."

"Hold on." Chuck clonked the coffee pot on the table. "I have a feeling we're going to need a lot more caffeine."

* * * * *

"Chuck, come on!" To Gary's relief, the shower finally shut off, but less than a minute later, he heard the buzz of an electric razor. He stomped through the bedroom, which had the same black and chrome décor as the living room, and yanked open the bathroom door.

"Yah!" Chuck yelped through a cloud of steam, grabbing the towel around his waist. "Geez, Gar."

Gary held up the police scanner. "We don't have time for this. It's already eight-thirty, and there's a domestic violence call a couple miles away."

"We'll never make it. It'll be over by the time the cops show. Haven't you figured that out?" Chuck grabbed the handle on his side of the door and tried to push it closed, but Gary stuck his foot in the way. "Let me get dressed in peace."

"You take longer to get ready than Marcia ever did. Get done now, so we're ready for the next call."

"Look, buddy." Chuck put a wet hand on Gary's shoulder. "I want to find that paper as much as you do, especially the Sports section. But there's no sense letting it lead you around by the nose. Make some coffee, have a piece of toast."

Gary reached for Chuck's razor. "You shouldn't waste time shaving."

"I can't have a face full of sandpaper. What if I meet the love of my life?" Chuck swung the razor out of Gary's reach. "You could stand to get rid of some stubble yourself."

The phone rang and Gary jumped, which moved his foot out of the door's path. Chuck slammed the door in his face and called, "Get that for me, will you? I'll be ready in a minute."

Shaking his hand, he picked up the phone near the bed. "Chuck Fishman's residence."

"Gary?"

He plopped down onto Chuck's bed—and sank. Then bobbed. Who had a waterbed anymore? "Hey, Marissa. What's up?"

"Dr. Stinton called me. He wants to meet with us this afternoon. Are we going in search of your paper again today?"

"Eventually," he muttered, struggling to stand. "Once Chuck's done with his grooming." 

She laughed. "Complicated process?"

"He's worse than a woman."

"You realize that's an insult to women everywhere, right?"

"Uh, yeah, no offense meant. What did Stinton have to say?"

"He's worried about something he calls aftershocks. I'm not exactly sure what he meant, but it sounds like it could be dangerous. I think he believes you more than he seemed to yesterday. He wants to meet us on campus this afternoon." 

Dangerous or not, if Stinton could help him get home, that was good news. Great news, even. But Gary couldn't shake the endless calls for help the night before. He didn't know if he could leave with this city and his friends in such a messed-up state. "Listen, I think we should go out again and look for that girl with the stroller. She might need help with the paper."

"Oh, no you don't." His scowling face half-covered in shaving cream, Chuck snatched the phone out of Gary's hand. "Marissa, look, I know you meant well, but that radio was a bad idea."

Gary went to out to the living room, where he pulled a light grey oxford out of the duffle. It was the most casual shirt he'd been able to find in the other Gary's closet. He buttoned it on and laced on his shoes. Thank goodness he'd made it to this side of reality with his Nikes intact.

"You may think you've seen obsession—well, not seen," Chuck was saying when Gary went back to the bedroom, "but people in mental institutions have nothing on this guy. No, I'm serious. He took it to bed with him like a security blanket and listened to it all night. No, he didn't—okay, yeah, but—yeah? Okay. We'll pick you up in twenty." He tossed the phone onto the bed and headed back toward the bathroom with a final scowl at Gary.

There was a coffee maker on the breakfast bar, so Gary started a pot brewing. He thought about taking Chuck's suggestion and making toast, but the only loaf of bread he could find was coated in green fuzz. He polished an apple from a bowl on his shirt, checked to make sure it wasn't plastic, and downed it in a few bites. A minute later Chuck came out, dressed at last, and held out a hand for the mug of coffee Gary'd poured for himself.

"Does Marissa think I'm crazy, too?" Gary asked.

Chuck shook his head. "She said I should let you continue with this shtick. I think the professionals call it enabling."

"Marissa's not enabling anything." Whatever that meant. Gary dug another mug out of the dishwasher. The little red "clean" light was on, so he figured he could trust the stuff in there better than the clutter on the counter. "She knows this is real."

"It better be." Chuck snagged his keys from the breakfast bar and nodded at the scanner. "Grab your security blanket and let's go. I know a betting parlor in the south Loop that's already open."

Gary was tempted to follow him without pointing out the obvious, but Chuck would probably make him pay for it later. "Uh, buddy?" He scratched at his own cheek.

"What?" Chuck blinked at him, then looked down at his coffee mug and saw the shaving cream on half the rim. "Ah, damn." He stalked back to the bathroom, and Gary took the moment to finish off his coffee and think about home, where the kitchen crew would have had a whole urn of the good stuff ready and waiting for him, and breakfast would be handy. Most days Marissa made sure there was something he could grab on his way out the door. Chuck, when he'd been in Chicago, had been a phone call away. He'd been exactly this grumpy about being coerced out of bed, but he'd been there. 

No way Gary would have survived the last two years without them. He hoped the woman with the paper had that kind of help, especially if she had a kid to take care of. Nate Hill certainly hadn't.

"Chuck!" he called. "C'mon, let's go."

* * * * *

"So..." Gary stared out the windshield instead of looking at the newspaper on his lap, or over at Chuck. Who was not really Chuck, or rather, _he_ was not really Gary. Not the right one, anyway. He didn't belong in this car, in this world. At the moment, he wasn't sure he belonged in his own skin. "You think she's right?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Chuck didn't appear to be looking at him, either, but it was hard to tell because Chuck was wearing sunglasses. The bruise on his jaw had was somewhere between purple and yellow. "Do you?"

"It shouldn't make sense." How could a stockbroker get caught up in something as nuts as shifting between universes? On the other hand, if Gary accepted the possibility, everything that had happened in the past few days could follow, with the exception of the magic newspaper. On the other other hand, Miss Clark—Marissa—had told them the magic newspaper could be the source of the energy needed to push him out of his own reality and into this one. "But when I fell at that lecture, it felt like the steps threw me down them, rather than me tripping. I could have sworn there was an earthquake or something. So I suppose what she's saying is possible. I mean, a week ago I wouldn't have believed I could get news from the future via the _Sun-Times._ "

"Yeah." Chuck made a turn onto Belmont, into the Roscoe Village neighborhood.

"You think she's right about there being a reason for this?"

"She always says that. It's like a reflex with her."

He kind of wanted it to be true. "If I'm not the paper boy, why are we heading off to do the damned thing's errands?" He toggled the door lock, bracing himself for the same response he'd gotten earlier. Marissa had insisted that since tomorrow's newspaper kept coming, he must be responsible for it. She'd even suggested that the reason he'd been taken away from everything he knew was because he had something to learn from the newspaper, and that when he learned whatever it was, the newspaper or whoever was in charge of it would send him home.

It had been almost enough to make him regret trying to be friendlier toward her. He'd been done with school for years. Who was she, or this newspaper, to decide what he needed to learn? About the only thing he was grateful for in her mess of a theory, other than the fact that she'd finally acknowledged he wasn't supposed to be in this place, was that she'd never come right out and said anything about God. Not that he didn't believe in God, but the thought of the ultimate Big Guy sticking his hand right into Gary's life and mixing things up was more cosmic than he could take. Especially with a hangover casting a leaden fog over his brain.

To his surprise, Chuck didn't give him the party line. He actually seemed to be paying more attention to the street signs than to Gary as he steered them toward the morning's first accident. "Somebody's gotta do it, right?" he finally said. "Guess it might as well be us. And besides..." He trailed off as he made another turn, sending them into a street of small shops and apartments.

"What?" Gary demanded. He finally looked over at Chuck, but Chuck seemed like he was lost in a world of his own.

"Last fall, you said—well, not you, you, but the other you. I was doing my usual number, pissed off that Gary wasn't hanging with me at McGinty's because he was spending all his time doing paper stuff, and he said maybe this kind of thing, the helping people part of it, was what he was supposed to be doing all along. Like maybe if Marcia hadn't pushed him into brokering, he would have given up his business degree and become a fireman or a cop or joined the Coast Guard. It's part of who he is." Chuck shook his head. "Poor guy can't help it." He flashed Gary a look that was just a little bit guilty. "I'm wondering if maybe that isn't part of you, too. Not that you have to give up working in the market. You're damn good at that, no matter what Marissa says. Better than Gar ever was, I'm guessing. But maybe if you gave this helping people thing a shot, you wouldn't hate it." He shrugged at the look Gary gave him. "Just something to think about."

Chuck was trying to make a point without starting another argument, Gary knew. Marissa had blown a gasket when she found out about the investments he'd made with McGinty's money. "Did you listen to a thing I said?" She'd been so loud the guys in the kitchen probably heard every word. "You aren't the owner; you never should have touched the computer! This is so illegal, it could get us shut down!"

"I didn't know that, did I?" he'd snapped back. "Who kept pushing me to get involved in the business? It sure as hell wasn't Chuck!"

It had gone downhill from there, with her insisting she should go with them to keep them out of trouble, legal and otherwise, and Chuck, at a panicked look from Gary, telling her she needed to stay and run the bar. She'd grumbled about how she did it better than either one of them could, and she'd finally let them go in exchange for a complete list of stories and locations. Gary had the feeling she blamed him for the weird universal mix-up, if that was what had happened, but that was ridiculous. It wasn't as if he wanted to take over the supernatural duties of a more heroic version of himself.

"What about his love life?" he asked as Chuck pulled into a parking place a block or so from where the accident was supposed to happen. "I mean, if he's not married to Marcia, he has to have somebody. Doesn't he?"

Chuck shrugged. "He's pretty much married to that paper. What's the scenario here?"

Gary looked down at the article, then at the clock on the dashboard. They had about five minutes before the accident was supposed to happen. He shook his head at the tiny picture of a crumpled Harley that went with the short article. He didn't really get the point. "How can he even make a dent in a city this size?" he asked Chuck. "I mean, traffic accidents and flying pineapples, it's good to stop those things, but what about the really nasty stuff? There must be half a dozen gang shootings or knife fights every night, and people get mugged and robbed at least that often every single day."

"Where you come from, maybe." Chuck leaned back in his seat and pulled off his shades. "It's really that bad?"

"Lately, yeah. It's like someone flipped a switch or something. I heard on the news that Chicago became the most crime-ridden city in the U.S. this past year."

"And Marissa—your Marissa—she really got mugged?" At Gary's nod, Chuck ran a hand over his jaw. "How bad was it?"

"She was in the hospital. I think for a few days. Like I said, I wasn't paying attention. It wasn't always that bad there, but the past few months, it's like—I don't know—" Prickly as Marissa could be, at least in this universe, he wasn't keen on imagining her getting hurt.

"Like someone stopped stopping the bad things," Chuck finished. "And now the Gary I know is stuck in that mess."

He said it like Gary was supposed to feel bad for the guy, but he wasn't sure he did. After all, it was the world he dealt with every damn day, and he had no desire to be responsible for it. "Everyone who lives in my Chicago is stuck in that mess."

"But everyone you know isn't trying to stop every bad thing he hears about. It's like a chronic condition with him, and without the paper?" Chuck winced. "Shit."

"You get used to it. You find work arounds. I'm lucky that between Marcia and me we have enough money to live in a safer part of the city, but even that's not enough. I don't let Marcia walk anywhere by herself at night. What the hell was Miss Clark doing out on her own?"

"She's stubborn that way. Or at least this one is." Chuck swallowed hard. "So Gar's in a place where Marissa got mugged and rich lawyers can't walk alone in their own neighborhoods?"

"Pretty much."

"And I'm not speaking to him."

"No."

"And Crumb's dead."

"Yeah."

Chuck had gone white, tingeing into green. "God, Gar," he whispered, and Gary was pretty sure it wasn't him he was talking to. He closed his eyes for a second, shook his head, then got out of the car. Gary followed him down to the corner. "Let's hope we can figure out what you're here to do, or that he figures out what he's there to do, so you can get back to that Wonderland of yours." Chuck took a deep breath, stuck his hands in his pockets, and seemed to shove his worries down there, too. Gary wished he could do the same. "So what are we looking for?"

"The newspaper says the Jeep runs a red light, smashes the motorcycle, throws the guy into a mailbox." Gary watched the traffic rolling through the intersection. There wasn't much of it, and he didn't see any Jeeps or Harleys. "How do we stop it?"

Chuck took the newspaper from him and blinked down at the article. He shrugged. "Beats me. Don't you have the hang of this by now?"

Gary looked and thought. It was just an ordinary intersection, a blip on the grid of Chicago. A pair of four-lane streets with a left turn lane on the north-south road and a stoplight, a couple bus shelters, and a steady flow of midmorning traffic.

Chuck tapped his watch. "Two minutes."

"We could disable the stoplight. Cut a wire or throw a baseball and break one of the lights."

"You got a baseball handy? Besides, that would just make things worse for the rest of the traffic."

He was right. Gary thought about what he had in his pockets that might help. Spare change, a cell phone that didn't work. Chuck's did. "Call the police?"

"And tell them an accident's _going_ to happen? You have a history with the cops. Or at least he does. It's better if you don't call them for every little thing."

Gary pointed at a shop across the street. "There's a hardware store."

"So?"

"We could throw nails into the turn lane, hope the Jeep gets a flat."

"So will every other car on the road." Chuck's voice slowed to a kindergarten teacher crawl. "Simple is better. Get out there and stop the Jeep from turning left." 

"How do I know what direction it's coming from?" Gary fought the temptation to kick a nearby fire hydrant. "Are you sure this other guy actually likes this shtick?" Seemed to him it was either abject frustration or terrifying danger all day long.

"Less than a minute," Chuck said. Gary remembered the tone in his voice the first night, when he'd gotten that lump on his head, and yesterday, when he'd run in front of a gun. If Gary didn't do something, Chuck might not come out of this in one piece. He would hate like hell to explain that to Marissa Clark.

"I'm going out there." 

Before he could step off the curb, Chuck grabbed his arm and pulled Gary around, so he faced the bus shelter across the intersection's other street.

Where a marmalade tabby sat, perched as though it was waiting for the bus to the catnip store.

"Is that his cat?" 

"Of course it is." Chuck released Gary's arm. "Go get him."

"But he was in Marissa's lap when we left the bar."

Chuck shoved him off the curb. "Just go."

He was halfway across the road when he heard the rattle of a car that was losing its muffler to his left, and the revving of a motorcycle coming up the intersecting street. The sounds paralyzed him for a split second, then Chuck yelled, " _Move_!"

He half-sprinted, half-jumped the rest of the way across the intersection. Horns blared, but the noises of the two vehicles kept going, and there was no crash. Gary's momentum carried him to the bus bench. He dropped down on it, staring stupidly at the flow of traffic and Chuck on the opposite curb, arms held out at the sides as if to ask what was wrong with him.

The cat nudged his arm. Gary ignored it, waiting for the rush of euphoria he'd experienced the day before. It didn't come, though a couple hideous possibilities—the motorists crushed in heaps of impossibly twisted meal; himself smashed into oblivion by one vehicle or the other—took their places in the loop of might-have-beens playing in his brain. Maybe it was a matter of diminishing returns. Or maybe he was still feeling the effects of the hangover.

That had to be it, because when the cat yowled at him, his head started pounding again. "Thanks a lot," Gary muttered. He picked the cat up by the scruff of its neck and hurried back across the street. 

"Geez, give me a heart attack." Chuck held out the _Sun-Times_ , folded open to the local stories. "It changed to an article about the new park they're building north of the Art Institute. You did it."

"Yeah, I guess." He thrust the limp cat toward Chuck. "What am I supposed to do with it now?"

"You're asking me?" Chuck pulled keys out of his pocket and they walked back to the rental, the cat purring even though Gary dangled it out in front of him the whole way. "Put the furball in the back." 

Gary got into the passenger seat, and Chuck passed him the newspaper. "Moving on. Page ten. It's another car thing. "

"'Three people were injured in a rollover yesterday morning,'" Gary read aloud. "'Police say the black SUV was traveling well above the speed limit when it rounded a corner and flipped, landing on the driver's side. The wet streets and low visibility due to yesterday's downpour contributed to the accident. Two people were listed in serious condition at Northwestern Medical Center. The third was in critical condition. Names are being withheld pending notification of relatives.'" Gary looked up from the story, baffled. The cat blinked at him from the back seat. "A car flips over in the rain?"

"That's what it says." Chuck started the Taurus. "SUVs, man. They're a menace."

Gary tilted his head, peering out the window at the cloudless blue sky. It was one of those perfect days that only came along in June. "It sure doesn't look like rain."

"Maybe it's lake effect." Chuck shrugged and put his sunglasses back on. "We got half an hour. You know what they say about the weather around here."

Gary turned pages until he found the weather summary. He scanned it, then held it out for Chuck to see. "It's not going to rain anywhere."

From the back seat, the cat let out a decidedly satisfied meow.

* * * * *

Gary and Chuck were a few blocks from Marissa's place when the scanner squawked to life. "All units, reports of a multi-vehicle accident at West Roscoe and Damen involving a CTA bus. All available units please respond. EMTs are en route."

"West Roscoe and Damen," Gary repeated. "That's what, a mile from here? Mile and a half?"

Chuck shook his head and flipped on the wiper blades. What had been a fine mist when they left Chuck's apartment had turned into a steady downpour. "You can't be serious. That crash already happened."

Gary raised his voice over the responses pouring out of the radio. "What if the person who gets the paper was there, trying to stop it? For all we know, she kept it from being worse. Let's go."

"I'm picking Marissa up before we go anywhere. This whole operation could use a dose of sanity."

"Sure," Gary said, "and then we'll check it out."

"Here I thought Marcia was the ambulance chaser in your family."

Marissa was waiting in front of her apartment building with Frank, who held an umbrella over their heads in one hand and swung a motorcycle helmet in the other. "Marissa, hi," Gary called. Frank's glower kept him from getting too close. "You ready?"

She nodded. "Gary, this is Frank. I think you two have met," she said with a mischievous smile.

"Hey," Gary said. 

Frank didn't even blink. He sized Gary up, then turned to Marissa. "You sure he's on the up and up? He's kind of rough around the edges."

Frank was the one with a snake tattoo around his neck, but Gary didn't want to get laid out with an uppercut, so he said, "Yeah, I didn't have time to shave. Uh, Marissa? We have something to get to."

She reached for Gary's arm. "I'll be fine, Frank. Gary's much more respectable than he seems."

"You said he's a stockbroker," Frank growled. "I don't trust stockbrokers."

"Don't worry. He's not a very good one."

Frank fixed Gary with one more warning glare, then handed him the umbrella. "In that case, I guess it's okay. You got me on speed dial, right?" He wedged the helmet onto his head. 

"I'll be fine," Marissa assured him. "Thanks for waiting with me."

Frank swung himself onto the motorcycle parked in a spot near the door. "Nice bike," Gary told him. "I've always wanted a Harley." Frank looked from him to the bike and back, more than a little incredulous. "But I...I think I'd be better off with a Honda."

Frank nodded, and his glower finally disappeared. "Yeah. You need balls to handle this girl. Sorry, Marissa."

She flashed another smile, this one all-too-innocent. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Chuck beeped the horn, and Frank snickered at the SUV. "That's your ride? Don't get lost in that thing."

Gary gave Frank a wave as he gunned the bike and took off, then got Marissa into Chuck's monster of a car and hopped into the passenger seat. "West Roscoe and Damen. Hit it."

"Sure thing, Elwood," Chuck drawled as he threw the SUV into drive.

Gary told Marissa what he'd heard on the scanner as Chuck drove, muttering about going to some betting parlor if they found the paper. "What did Doctor Stinton have to say?" he asked Marissa after he'd explained the bus crash.

"It didn't sound good," she said slowly. "There were so many 'if's and 'maybe's and 'narrow possibilities' woven through it, I found it hard to follow, but I think it boils down to you and the other Gary Hobson tearing some kind of hole in the membrane between the two realities and the problems that can happen if that hole doesn't heal."

"What kinds of problems?" Gary asked.

"He wasn't very specific, but he did mention things not being where they're supposed to be, and accidents, and then he said something about the universe taking corrective measures to close the hole. He didn't seem to think there was a lot we could do about that, other than for you to stop trying to get home."

"I have to get home," Gary said. "And wouldn't that fix the problem, if he and I were both back where we belong?"

"You'd think so," she said, but she looked doubtful.

It took fewer than five minutes to get to the Roscoe Village neighborhood. They had to park a few blocks away from the bus crash. After a whispered, "Stay with her this time," to Chuck, Gary ran ahead of his friends to the yellow barricades that had been set up around the scene.

Half the CTA bus was up on the curb. The rest of it was in the street, bent like a child's toy in its accordion middle. It couldn't just unbend and drive off, because a delivery truck protruded from the angle created by the bus. The whole thing looked like a huge, blunt arrow.

People staggered around in the rain. EMTs shouted, police officers lit flares and waved the traffic onto other streets, and dozens of bystanders watched, hands over mouths, heads shaking, talking into cell phones. Reminding himself there was no guarantee the woman with the stroller was the paper's recipient, Gary searched for anyone who might have known about it ahead of time, someone who looked desperate, guilty, or responsible. Anything but heroic. All the umbrellas and rain gear made it hard to see faces. Every stroller that went by turned his head, even as he listened to the people on the other side of the barricade tell their stories.

"It's some kind of miracle," a guy in a business suit who held an ice pack to his head told anyone who would listen. "I think we all made it out on our own two feet. If that truck had hit anywhere other than the joint at the middle of the bus, a lot of people would be headed to the hospital."

"How'd that happen?" Gary asked him. "Why'd it hit right in the middle?"

The guy blinked at him, rain dripping down his face. "How the hell should I know?"

"Hey, Gary!" Chuck called from half a block away, pulling Marissa through the crowd as he tried to manage the umbrella. Gary started over to them, but a flash of plaid on the other side of the accident scene, nearly hidden behind the bus, caught his eye. It was the same cheerful yellow and blue stroller he'd seen last night, standing out from the crisis and the rain.

The woman had her back to him; she wore a blue bandana and a denim jacket, and the stroller had a clear cover over it that he didn't remember from the night before. Gary ducked and leaned, trying to get a better look at her. She was talking to a cop who stood between her and the gap in the barricades with his arms folded, and she leaned forward, as though she was trying to get out of there.

"She's here, see?" he said when Chuck and Marissa finally reached him, both of them wet despite the umbrella. He pointed for Chuck's benefit, but just then the cops started moving witnesses and victims away from the bus so a tow could get to the delivery truck, and the people, and then the tow truck, blocked her.

"Nope." Chuck gave Marissa's arm a tug, and she stumbled into a puddle. "Sorry, didn't want any of these yahoos on the street to run into you." He turned back to Gary. "You think it's the same chick we saw yesterday?"

"Did you just say 'chick?'" Marissa shook his hand off her arm and reached for the umbrella.

"Chill out, Betty Friedan," Chuck snapped, but he handed her the umbrella anyway. Gary hid a quick grin; for a split-second, their bickering, which had always set him a little on edge before, had brought him back home again. 

If he really wanted to go home, though, he had to see if the woman with the paper needed help. "I've got to get to her," he said. The shortest way was through, so he pushed the nearest barricades apart. But a cop saw him and blocked his way, one hand on either barricade, feet planted wide apart. The guy was at least as big as Frank.

"Hey buddy, no gawkers, no reporters."

"I'm just trying to get through."

"None of that either." He yanked the barricades back together, and Gary had to jump back or get smashed between them. The cop jerked his thumb away from the accident scene. "Don't you have a job to get to?"

"I'm trying," Gary said, but under his breath. He moved down the row of barricades, hoping for another way through. A few yards down, he could see past the tow truck again, this time at a different angle. The woman with the stroller was still trying to get past the barricades, at least as frantically as Gary was trying to get in. She moved the stroller, and a newspaper fell off its roof. She lunged forward and caught it before it could land in a puddle. Still talking to the cop, or more likely listening, from the way he loomed over her, she slipped the paper into a pocket in the back of the stroller.

The cop didn't seem to care about the paper, and there was no reason for her to hide a newspaper from him unless it was _the_ paper. Her movements resonated so much that Gary responded like a tuning fork, a little shaking in his hands, a loud hum in his head.

"Gary, what is it?" Marissa asked, even though she was yards away and had no way to know what was going on.

Gary ducked under the umbrella, elbowing Chuck into the rain. "She has the paper." He couldn't get across, so they'd have to go around. "We need to get over there, c'mon." He took the umbrella from Marissa, keeping it over her head, and let her tuck her hand into the crook of his elbow.

"Where?" Chuck demanded.

"Back to your car. We need to circle the scene and get to the other side. _Now_ , Chuck, c'mon." He hustled Marissa back toward their parking spot, got her in, and threw himself into the passenger seat. 

"Would you two stop dripping on my leather seats?" Chuck started the car.

"Some of us wouldn't be wet if you actually knew how to use an umbrella," Marissa said.

"Go!" Gary shouted when he saw the barest of openings in the traffic. Chuck yanked his SUV into the flow of cars, eliciting honks.

"You're sure she's the one?" Marissa asked.

"She did something to stop the accident from being worse, and she's on her way to something else, something that's happening soon. Take a right up here at the light."

"He can't be sure," Chuck told Marissa, then asked Gary, "You haven't even seen her up close. How can you be sure?"

"Because I do this every damn day. Go through it!" Gary yelled as a light went yellow. "Faster, Chuck. Two more blocks and another right, go!"

* * * * *

Chuck parallel parked on a side street that featured row houses and a sandwich shop. When Gary opened the door, the cat slipped out of the backseat with a screech that set his head pounding again. For a split second, he thought about closing the door and making Chuck take off so they could lose the damn thing.

"All this on-street parking is killing me. You'll cover it if I get a ticket, right?" Chuck groused as he dumped coins into a meter.

"You'll be able to cover just about anything with the money I'm making you," Gary said.

"Until you go home, or Marissa convinces you to stop, at which point I won't be making it anymore." Chuck looked pointedly up at the sky. "No rain. You sure this is the right place?"

"The newspaper says Wolcott and Henderson." Gary followed Chuck's gaze to the still-cloudless sky. "Right about now, a black SUV is supposed to come around one of these corners, hit a wet patch, and somersault."

"Maybe the paper's wrong." The cat trotted away from Chuck to rub its back against a lamp post.

"About the rain?" Gary asked.

"Or about the accident."

"It wasn't wrong about the first one." When Chuck blinked at him, he said, "I'm just as surprised as you are that I believe this thing. Not that I know what to do about the accident."

"Well, you could—" Chuck was interrupted by an almighty yowl. The cat dashed into the intersection and the ground beneath their feet shook as if a train were headed for them. 

Instead, Gary saw an SUV barreling down the street toward the cat, who'd stopped in a patch of weird, rain-washed light. It was silvery and shimmering and reminded him of the light he'd seen back when he'd fallen down the stairs in the Gleacher Center. Where Marissa insisted he'd switched places with the other Gary Hobson.

Unsure whether he was trying to save the cat or to throw himself back home, he ran for the light. Tires squealing, the SUV careened toward him. Gary waved his arms. Through the rain-spattered windshield, the wide-eyed driver mouthed, "What the fuck?" just as Gary shouted it himself. 

The SUV had already started its turn. Gary could have sworn at least one of the wheels left the road, but the driver, who was unmistakably Chuck Fishman, corrected hard. He swerved to the left to avoid Gary, who froze when he saw himself sitting in the passenger seat. Brakes squealing, the SUV skidded into a brief fishtail then righted itself. Gary heard Chuck yell his name in stereo as he back peddled toward the curb and fell on his butt. The squealing crescendoed and cut off. 

Gary sat up. There was no SUV in the road. It hadn't turned or sped off; it was gone, just like the sound and the strange light. A set of wet tire tracks that started down the block where the SUV had appeared ended abruptly a couple of yards from where Gary sat.

"You okay?" Chuck jogged over and gave him a hand up. Good thing, because Gary's legs were none too steady. He looked from Chuck to the fast-drying tire tracks and back again. Chuck snapped in Gary's face. "Speak to me."

"How—who—" Gary gulped as they stumbled back onto the sidewalk. "That was your car. Not yours, the other Chuck's. My Chuck." He shook his head. "Okay, that just sounds weird."

Chuck nodded slowly, looking up and down the street as if he expected the SUV to reappear. "It was here, right? And then it disappeared."

"It was—" Gary began.

"Wet," they both said together, then Chuck went on, "And I saw you in the passenger seat. And out on the street."

"You were driving," Gary told him. They stared at each other for an endless moment. More cars whizzed by, none of them black SUVs. Gary rubbed his aching head. "I heard the cat and then I heard the car before I saw it, which isn't possible. What?" he asked, because Chuck was peering into and under his rental car, looking more worried than ever.

"Cat's gone," he said.

"He ran toward the light. Toward the SUV with the other me in it." Should Gary have done the same thing? "It was like someone opened a door in that universal membrane thing Marissa told us about this morning, and they came through. Just for a second, but they were here. How the hell did that happen?"

Chuck slumped against his car, resting his head on the hood. "I didn't think it was possible to need a drink more than I did last night." He sighed, then looked up at Gary. "You're going to make me do it, aren't you?"

"What's that?"

"Tell Marissa she's right."

Gary nodded. "Oh, yeah, that's definitely your job." He pulled out the newspaper to check the next story, and didn't look up as he added, "Better tell her about the cat, too."

Chuck moaned.

* * * * *

The SUV landed back on all four wheels with a bone-rattling jolt. Chuck hit the brakes and the three of them lurched forward. Marissa's cane and the umbrella hit the windshield and fell into Gary's lap. The SUV skidded to an angled stop amidst honking horns and the downpour that didn't seem to have stopped for a second, even though Gary would have sworn he'd seen a flash of sunlight when the earth rumbled and threw Chuck's car out of the path of the guy in the intersection.

Of _him_.

Maybe it had been the white light of a near-death experience.

"What the hell?" Chuck said. He looked over at Gary with eyes the size of dollar coins. "Did you just—did he just—he was you."

"OhmyGodohmyGod. Are you guys all right?" Marissa's voice was muffled by her hands over her mouth. 

"It's okay." Gary was about to tell her what he'd—impossibly—just seen, and why they weren't all dead, but then he caught, out the window over her shoulder, a denim jacket, a blue and yellow stroller. He yanked off his seatbelt and leapt into the street, where he was greeted by a cacophony of blaring horns. He dashed through puddles and traffic, but by the time he made it across the street, she was gone. 

He sprinted up and down the block, checked in doorways and shop fronts, but the woman with the stroller wasn't there. He stopped at a corner, wiping wet hair off his forehead. "Damn, where'd she go?"

He was answered by a meow.

Gary froze and closed his eyes. He'd survived a near-accident thanks to a guy who looked exactly like himself. The shock of it all might have caused him to imagine the woman and her stroller. It might have made him think one meow on a random street in a Chicago that wasn't his could be his cat.

"Meow."

Gary forced out a breath and opened his eyes, and there, perched on the sill of a shop window, dry and smug as always, was Cat. Gary approached him with his hand held out. After all, if Gary could have a double, so could Cat, though that thought was pretty scary. "Hey, buddy, is that really you?"

In response, Cat rubbed its head against his hand, then jumped at Gary, who caught him. The familiar, furry weight made Gary's knees wobble. Purrs rumbled through Cat's throat. Gary turned for the street in time to see Chuck's SUV pull into an alley. The rest of the traffic resumed business as usual and he had to wait for a green light to cross before he could get to the alley, where a visibly freaked-out Chuck was already out of the car and pacing.

"What the hell just happened? Where did you go? What are you doing with that furbag?" Chuck demanded, sneering at the cat.

"Don't listen to him," Gary told Cat. "You remember how he gets."

"Gar, c'mon!" Chuck waved his arms as he stomped toward him. "You saw the same thing I did, right?"

"Will one of you please tell me what's happening?" Marissa's shaky voice came from the other side of the SUV, and Gary hurried around to help her out. Most of the rain wasn't making it down between the buildings, and he figured she didn't want to be in that car right now any more than he did.

"You okay?" he asked belatedly. "You didn't get hurt when we came back down to earth there, did you?"

"Oh, and whose fault was that?" Chuck demanded, pacing around the front of the car. He kicked a pop can back into the street.

"Seems like it would be the driver's," Marissa said. 

"Not when the guy sitting next to you in the passenger seat is also standing out in the street waving his arms at you to stop!" 

"What is he talking about?" Marissa asked.

"Whoever it was saved our asses," Gary told Chuck. "If you'd taken another corner that fast—"

"You were the one telling me not to slow down!" Chuck stalked down the alley to a dumpster.

Cat met Gary's gaze with its own baleful one. They wouldn't have been here, wouldn't have been going so fast, if he hadn't been trying to find the woman with the paper.

"I don't understand." Marissa wrapped her arms around herself. 

"We were going to turn right—" Gary started, but Chuck had already paced back to them.

"And what's with the cat?" 

"A cat?" Marissa sounded hopelessly confused, and Gary didn't blame her. But he was pretty sure he knew how to make her feel better.

"Not just any cat." He touched Marissa's shoulder, and after a second she unclenched her arms from around her stomach. Gary guided her hand to Cat's side. "Marissa, I'd like you to meet my cat."

"The one who brings you the newspaper?" she asked, stroking Cat's back. The purring against Gary's arm felt like a speedboat motor. "What's its name?"

"Cat," Gary told her.

"Oh, for the love of _God_!" Chuck stomped back to the dumpster and kicked it.

"After we stopped," Gary told Marissa, "I thought I saw the woman with the stroller out on the sidewalk. That's why I got out. She took off again, and I couldn't find her, but I did find Cat, right near where she'd been. You want to hold him?"

Marissa took Cat in her arms, and he nuzzled his head into her hand, just like always. "He's sweet on you," Gary told her, and she smiled. 

Chuck circled back to them, still ranting. "Now that we're all best buds with the stray, can we talk about how we almost died, thanks to Gar and his doppelganger? Because the question remains: what the hell happened?"

"I'd like to know, too," Marissa said.

Gary sighed. "Okay, well, we were about to take the corner too fast."

"Your fault," Chuck reminded him, then plowed on. "The wheels on my side left the pavement and you were there in the street, so I swerved."

Marissa stopped scratching behind Cat's ears. "But Gary was in the car."

"He was waving a newspaper," Gary said. "Did you guys feel that earthquake?"

"It was the other Gary Hobson, wasn't it?" Marissa said. "The one who belongs here. Did he know it was us?"

"I don't know, but he was sure as hell trying to stop the accident."

Chuck shook his head, arms crossed over his chest. "I know the _Sun-Times_ has an out-of-town edition, but this is ridiculous."

"Or a miracle," Marissa said. "If he hadn't been here in the road, we might have crashed. We might have—" She broke off with a shudder. 

"Oh, just come right out and say it. We might have died, and all because this Gary's stalking some chick with a kid."

Marissa hugged Cat closer. "But that other Gary stopped the accident. Dr. Stinton said if you and that other Gary Hobson were both in the same place at the same time, now that you've already broken through the membrane that keeps the universes apart once, it could be more likely to happen again."

Gary had seen something shift around the guy who'd waved them down, an odd, thick shimmer of light. "Are you saying if this happens again, we could switch places? I could go home?"

"He said the theory is that if such a tear were to happen, the universes might start to take notice and try to heal themselves. Knit themselves back together."

"And that's bad?"

"It doesn't matter," Chuck said. "You're still here, aren't you? So obviously this crap about the universes blinking out of existence isn't going to happen."

"Yet," Marissa finished ominously.

"Because of her," Gary said. "I didn't go home because I can't go home, not until I help her. She was trying to stop it, too," he went on at Chuck's exasperated, puzzled look. "With a baby in a stroller, she was trying to stop this, and the bus crash, and the fire yesterday." Trying to do everything he did, all day long, but with a kid. He was more sure than ever that she needed his help. "I have to find her."'

"I really think you should talk to Doctor Stinton," Marissa said. "If you tell him about the paper, he might be able to figure out the best course of action."

"Might be better off going home and watching _Beakman's World_ ," Chuck muttered. "Or maybe _Star Trek_."

"Yeah, we'll do that," Gary said. "As soon as I find her."

* * * * *

Gary flexed his hands into and out of fists a few times, staring at the small brick building across the street. He was still trying to shake the unnerving sensation that he'd seen his own ghost that morning in the intersection, still trying to figure out what it meant. The giant smiley face logo of the Happy Mouth Dental Clinic didn't have any answers for him. It might have seemed friendly if not for its equally giant teeth. He looked down at the single page of the paper Chuck had given him before he'd kicked him out of the rental car and headed off to stop some guy from falling out of a tree. There was some kind of accident involving fireworks after this, and much later there'd be a knife fight at a bar, but right now he had one headline to worry about.

ANESTHESIA OVERDOSE PUTS BOY IN COMA

"Fourteen-year-old Jeffon Adams was in a coma last night at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Technicians at the Happy Mouth Dental Clinic apparently gave the boy an incorrect dosage of anesthesia during a wisdom tooth extraction. The technicians were distracted by other patients before they realized the error had occurred." 

How was he supposed to fix this?

"Un-distract them," Chuck had told him with a shrug. "I'll be back in half an hour." 

A direct approach was probably best, along with a healthy dose of pretending he belonged there. Marcia had taught him how to bluff his way through board meetings and client transactions. "Walk into there as Gary Hobson, Junior Partner and future CEO," she'd said by way of a pep talk. "If you believe you belong, so will they." 

Once he thought of it like that, the whole thing seemed more manageable. He shoved the folded page into the back pocket of his jeans, pushed open the clinic doors, and walked right through the waiting room, following a woman dragging her twin girls into the heart of the clinic. Past the reception area, the clinic was all bright lights, white walls, antiseptic, and a long hall of doorways. Jeffon Adams could be behind any one of them. 

"Sir, you can't be in here unless you're with your child," twittered a voice behind him. He turned to see a tiny woman in toothy smiley face scrubs standing with her feet planted wide and her hands on her hips. She had a pencil stuck behind her ear, like some kind of relic from the 1960s.

"Where's Jeffon Adams?"

"I can't tell you that," the woman said, but her gaze darted to the door to Gary's left. Room three. She held open the door that led back to the waiting room. "You need to leave."

"Is there anyone with him?" He reached for the door handle, but she ducked under his arm to block his way into the room. He'd have to lift her bodily out of the way to get in. He could see a boy lying on the chair with his eyes closed, his mouth partially open, and tubes in his mouth and nose. "No, there is not."

"You can't go in," the receptionist insisted. Screams erupted from the room down the hall where the twins had gone, and she jumped. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Check the kid!" Gary insisted. 

"You can't go in," she repeated. She'd make a great robot. A couple more doors in the hallway opened, and two women in scrubs hurried toward the screaming.

"We need some help here!" Gary shouted. Another woman's head peered out from the room of screaming, and Gary waved her down the hall. "Please, this kid's in trouble."

She looked back over her shoulder, then headed toward Gary. She wore a white coat instead of scrubs. "Debra?" she asked the receptionist. "What's going on?"

"Dr. Seward, I told him he couldn't go in, but he won't leave!" 

"This kid's in trouble," Gary insisted. "Check his anesthesia."

Dr. Seward's glare was a dead ringer for Gary's mom's. "Stay away from my patients."

He held up his hands. "You're the one staying away. That's the problem." 

"Where's David?" Dr. Seward slipped past Debra and into the treatment room. "If you've touched anything in here I will have you arrested," she shot over her shoulder at Gary.

"He didn't, Doctor," Debra piped up. "I wouldn't let him." She scowled triumphantly at Gary, but he was watching Dr. Seward. She checked a couple readings, then turned back to them, her frown deepening from annoyance to worry.

"How long has he been under? And where the hell is David?" 

Debra went pale under her freckles and hurried down the hall, presumably to fetch David. Dr. Seward started unhooking tubes. "Is he going to be okay?" Gary asked. The doctor didn't seem to hear him, and he figured it was better to get out of there and check on the paper outside.

He made it to the reception area, but Debra caught up with him. "Sir!" She grabbed his arm, and everyone in the waiting area turned to stare at them. "How did you know?"

"I'm a—I'm—" Gary fumbled for an explanation. "Stockbroker and financial planner" wasn't going to cut it. "I'm a psychic."

"Oh!" She nodded, then stepped back and let him go.

The good feeling rushed back, and for once the outcome he'd prevented didn't impress itself upon his brain. His step was a little lighter, and he didn't even mind that Chuck wasn't waiting for him at the curb. He moved about halfway down the block before he pulled the page of the _Sun-Times_ out of his pocket. The story about Jeffon Adams was gone, replaced by one about elections. 

This wasn't his city. What did he care who ran it? He refolded the page, and a headline on the other side, a continuation from a front page of a story he knew hadn't been there before, caught his eye.

HOSTAGE TAKER KILLS THREE

* * * * *


	20. Chapter 20

_Some hearts are born on a floodplain_  
_Keeping an eye on the sky for rain_  
_You work for the ground that gets swept away_  
_When you live closer_  
_~Sara Groves_

* * *

 

"Gary, c'mon, it's been _hours._ " Chuck made another random right-hand turn, and the buildings outside the SUV became less retail, more industrial. Gary had seen no sign of the woman with the stroller, and none of the scanner calls sounded like promising places to find her.

Marissa touched the face of her watch. "It's only been ninety-five minutes."

"That's more than one hour. Which equals hours. It's gloomy, it's raining. I could be all cozy at home, or at work, cozily keeping my job, which is what the girl Gary's looking for is probably doing. Why don't you two admit this isn't working so we can do something more productive, like eating lunch?"

"Doctor Stinton is done with his class at one," Marissa pointed out. "He insisted we talk to him today. He sounded worried."

"It's not that late yet," Gary said. "No matter what he has to say about the universe, I know how the paper works. I'm not going anywhere until I find that woman and help her. What?" he asked when he caught Chuck looking over at him, eyes slightly narrowed. "Keep your eyes on the road."

"After what you said last night, I thought maybe you were angling to get that newspaper for a look at the race results or something." Chuck shook his head. "But you're not, are you?"

"I learned the hard way not to gamble with this thing."

"The Gary I know would never give up a chance to make that kind of money. I guess this is proof you really are a completely different person."

Gary wasn't so sure about that. "I tried that. Spent a couple months living off the paper by making bets at the track, and it nearly got me, the president, and a bunch of other people killed." Gary glanced out the windshield, then back at Marissa and Cat. They made a pair, both of them listening to the bickering up front. "That paper causes more problems than it solves, and that's why I have to find her." He reached back and chucked Cat under the chin. "You know that, don't you? So why don't you show me where she is?"

"He's purring like crazy," Marissa said.

"But he's not answering." Not that Gary expected words, but usually Cat had ways of letting him know what to do. "Maybe he's just as lost in this universe as I am."

"How about lunch?" Chuck asked. "Can you do lunch in this universe?"

Before Gary could answer, the radio cackled. "Shots reported, possible hostage situation in progress in an office building in the 5000 block of West Belden. All units in the vicinity please respond."

Cat jumped into Gary's lap with a startling yowl. "She's there, isn't she?" Gary asked.

"Did he say, 'shots fired'?" Marissa asked.

"Oh, no," Chuck moaned.

"Go," Gary told him. 

"But—shots—lunch—quantum physics!"

"I'll make it up to you." Foreboding and certainty warred in Gary's gut. Sure, it was a dangerous situation, but that meant the woman who got the paper, the woman with a baby, was likely to be there, and more likely than ever to need his help. "Go."

* * * * *

Marissa paced the short distance between the bar and the shelves behind it, her fingers tapping on the phone's headset as she listened to Chuck describe the strange near-accident. She had nowhere else to go; the lunch crowd was already keeping the bartenders busy and filling the seating area. She could feel Crumb watching her from the other bar, not only because she knew he was over there, but because he was asking people to repeat their requests. He never needed to hear a drink order more than once.

"You're sure it was Gary you saw in the car?" she asked Chuck again. " _Our_ Gary?"

"I'm telling you, there was a Gary in the car and a Gary on the road. The one on the road isn't ours, so I have to assume the one in the car was. If there are more of them, I really don't want to know. But you're missing the most important part."

"That Crumb's right about this? They really did switch places?"

"No, that _I_ was the one driving the car." His voice was half an octave higher than usual. "Well, not me, me, but another me. There's more than one Chuck Fishman in the world!"

"Not in this world. In another one. Where our Gary is." Her toe hit the edge of the rubber mat that A.J. stood on, and she turned back toward the end of the bar, reminding herself to whisper. "What happened to the car?"

"The other me hit the brakes, nearly hit Gary, and then it was gone. Vanished. Kaput."

Along with a chance to get Gary home. What if there wasn't another one? How would this other Gary ever make peace with this world? How was she supposed to make peace with him? But she believed the Gary she knew had ended up in that other world for a reason. If he hadn't come home yet, it was only because the reason hadn't been fulfilled. That brought her up short. She froze half-on, half-off the mat.

"You saw the story about the accident in the paper, right?" she asked Chuck. "And Gary, the Gary who's with us right now, he stopped that accident?"

"It said there were three people in that SUV, and all of them were going to end up in the hospital."

"He saved our Gary's life."

"And the other Chuck. Don't forget that."

And a third person. Marissa had chills on top of chills. "Even though it happened in another universe, the paper told him about it. It's looking out for him. For both of them, Chuck, and for both of you. It means this is going to work out. It has to."

There was a moment of silence. "Look, I'm just telling you what happened. What it means, I have no idea. I'll leave that up to the brains of the operation. I've got enough to figure out just getting us through the day."

Goddess of coffee this morning, and now brains of the operation? That was laying it on thick, even for Chuck. She turned and leaned back against the bar. "If I'm the brains, then I should be with you guys. The story about the accident is gone?"

"Yup, disappeared. Two more articles showed up. Like that Greek chick with all the heads."

"The hydra was a sea monster."

"Like I said, brains of the operation. Anyway, yeah, I just dropped Gary off at a dentist's office so he could stop a kid from going into some kind of anesthetic coma."

Her own voice hit a higher register. "You left him on his own?" 

"I have to talk some guy out of climbing a tree. Besides, you know how much I hate dentists. I gave him the easy one, trust me. Or at least, the first one. Tree's about half an hour behind it, but there was no way we could do both things without splitting up." 

"This is why you need me. He's still new to this." Not to mention resistant to doing anything with the paper that didn't involve making money.

"It's just an anesthesia overdose. He'll be fine. Look, I have to go before this guy breaks his neck. After that, there's a fireworks problem to deal with."

"A fireworks problem?"

"Yeah, as in, some teenager's going to have a problem picking his nose because he won't have any fingers because he tries to light an M-80 with a paper match."

"But you're going to get Gary first, right?"

"Stop worrying, it'll give you wrinkles. I'll do the tree thing, pick him up from the dentist, and we'll take care of the little pyromaniac together. No sweat. I'll call you when we're done." The line clicked closed.

She shouldn't feel this frantic, this close to flying off the handle or bursting into tears. After all, they had achieved a kind of truce. They knew what was going on, and she had at least some degree of faith that the paper would do what it could to make it come out right. Chuck had seen Gary, _their_ Gary. He was alive and in one piece, even if he wasn't able to come home yet. 

But the world was still out of joint, and she didn't know how to fix it.

She forced a deep breath and hung up the phone. As if a bubble had burst, sound rushed back into her consciousness, a jumble of laughter and lunch orders. Was it her imagination, or was the story Crumb was telling some of the regulars about the time he'd arrested a couple guys in gorilla suits for smoking marijuana in the parking lot at Comiskey suddenly louder than everything else, as if he wanted to make sure she knew where he was?

Deliberate or not, she let his voice draw her to the bar on the opposite side of the room. 

"So I'm trying to cuff the one who's still in costume, because he wasn't wearing anything underneath it, and he wants to know if they'll give him bananas in jail. The other one's trying to run—"

"Crumb?" She tilted her head toward the office.

"Tell you the rest later." He followed her into the office and shut the door behind them.

"Those students you talked to were right. Chuck and Gary have proof." She repeated Chuck's story while she paced again, this time the length of the office. Spike sat up when she reached his bed by the couch, shaking his head so she could hear his tags jingle. She reached down and scratched behind his ears; he really needed a walk.

Crumb eased himself down onto her desk chair, letting out a dubious grunt. "You trust Fishman on this?"

"I trust him to tell me what he saw, or what he thinks he saw, yes." She paused, then asked the same question Chuck had asked her. "What do you think it means?"

"Sweetheart, if I knew what any of this meant, I'd be writing science fiction instead of my memoirs." He sighed. "I'll call Ryan and Anil, see if they have any ideas." He paused, then asked, "You okay?"

She nodded. "I just want to be out there with them, helping them run Gary's errands. If they mess that up, he's going to be upset when he gets home."

"When he gets home," Crumb repeated, then added more firmly, "It's stupid of them not to have you there, but they've never been the sharpest knives hanging from the chandelier. I have a number for Anil here in my wallet."

But before he could pick up the phone, it rang. "McGinty's," Marissa said when Crumb handed her the headset.

"This is the operator. I have a collect call from a Gary Hobson. Will you accept the charges?"

"Of course." She held her breath, wondering if calls could cross universes. "Gary, is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me." Whichever Gary it was, his voice was wound tight. "I need help."

* * * * *

"I did the right thing," Gary told Miss Clark. Marissa. Whatever. "I called the cops. And the damn thing changed again. It got worse. You never told me this could happen!"

"I know it's hard to take, but your—your source of information," she said pointedly. "—does change sometimes."

"But why would calling the cops make it worse?" 

"God knows," she said, in a tone that said she actually believed He did. "Give me the details."

"There's a guy holding hostages over at Family Life and Health on Elm Street. That's just a couple blocks from here. A deranged guy with a grudge, a police standoff, an escape attempt." The newspaper wouldn't hold still in his hand. But Gary could read enough to know this was way beyond anything he could handle. "This is not. My. Department. He's going to kill people! I called the police because I am _not_ walking into that."

"What did they say?"

"They asked me questions I couldn't answer. So I hung up. The story changed. Now this guy's going to kill four people instead of three. One of them's a cop. Another one's a single mother with three kids."

"He won't kill anybody. You're going to stop it, and we're going to help you."

She was far too calm. Maybe she didn't understand what he'd said. "I told you, I'm not going anywhere near this mess. That's why I called you." He ran a hand through his hair, wishing he'd never looked at the newspaper. Wishing he'd never even heard of it. "What would the other guy do?"

"Gary would try to stop it before it starts, but if that didn't work—" She let out a half laugh. "He'd go storming in there without a plan. Which is exactly what he did a couple months ago."

"It turned out okay, though, didn't it?"

"It turned out terrifying. Which is why I don't think you should do it. But Crumb was there. He's an expert negotiator. He kept Gary and another hostage alive by—No, he's saying—hold on, Gary." Her voice went muffled for a minute that felt like an eternity, then came back clear. "Isn't Chuck supposed to pick you up?"

"Yeah, he should be here any minute. He's got most of the paper, including the front page."

"Wait for him. Crumb and I will go to the insurance office and warn the police. You guys can meet us there, but promise me you'll take care of anything new that shows up, no matter how bad it is."

"Okay, yeah, sure." What could be worse than a hostage taker with a gun?

"You did the right thing, calling us," she said in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring tone.

"Yeah." Gary was just glad he'd handed the hostage situation over to people who knew what they were doing. He hung up the phone and pried his hand clear. Wiping his palm on his jeans, he re-checked the page. 

The story had changed again. Now the headline read, AT LEAST THREE DEAD IN HOSTAGE CRISIS, and the first line of the continuation said, "The gunman sprayed bullets at police as he emerged from the office. In addition to the three dead hostages, a police sergeant and two unnamed civilians were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Only one is expected to survive. All names are being withheld pending notification of family and friends." The photo next to the article showed a dog, a German Shepherd with a harness, standing to the side of an ambulance while a gurney was loaded in. 

_Damn_ it. Two civilians that close to the police, plus the dog in the photo, meant Marissa and Crumb. Meant it was his fault. The part of the story on his page read like an accusation, one that, for the first time in this whole mess, he totally deserved. He'd had squabbles with both of them, but he didn't think whatever—or whoever—was in charge of this newspaper would send him home if he let the other guy's friends die. 

He couldn't look at that dog's photo a second longer. He balled up the page and tossed it at the phone, then started back toward the clinic entrance to wait for Chuck. But who knew how long it would be before Chuck showed up? What would happen at that office while he waited? If only he could talk to Marcia, his own Marcia. She'd know what to do.

He was pretty sure working with Marissa Clark full time would drive him nuts, but he didn't want her to die, not when he remembered how she'd called Marcia at his request, or the look on her face when she'd left the bar last night. She liked that other guy, and she was being kind to him because of it.

He made a sharp one-eighty and headed back toward the address he'd seen in his half of the article. Whatever kind of guy he really was, he couldn't be the guy who let her die.

That other Gary Hobson was going to owe him big time.

* * * * *

The address from the scanner turned out to be a small strip mall that housed a nondescript insurance agency, a hair salon, and a two empty storefronts. At Gary's direction, Chuck stopped at the very end of the lot, as far as they could get from other parked cars.  
"According to your scanner, the police are on the way. Why aren't there sirens?" Marissa asked.

"Must be coming in quiet." Gary scratched Cat behind the ears. The scanner was so full of chatter he couldn't make out exactly what the police were doing, but he'd been through this before. "Don't want to spook the guy. He's got to be in the insurance agency." The blinds of the office's windows were down. 

"Yeah, 'cause who goes postal in a hair salon?" Chuck drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

"What are you going to do?" Marissa asked. 

Gary drew in a deep breath. "I'm going in there."

"What? Gary, no."

Chuck stared at him as if he'd grown another head. "You can't just walk into the middle of a hostage situation! Are you missing the essential self-preservation instinct everyone else has? Is that why you get your magic newspaper?"

"I get the paper so I can stop stuff like this."

"But you don't have the paper now." Marissa's forehead creased with worry. "All we know is someone in there—someone who is very upset—has a gun."

"You said it yourself. The police are on their way," Chuck flung his hand at the scanner. "They know what to do. Let them take care of it."

Gary unbuckled his seat belt. "I have to get in there. That's how it works."

"The only way in is the door." Chuck pointed at the office. "The glass door, through which any hostage-taker will see you. He'll be able to take perfect aim at your big, stupid head."

Chuck was probably right, and Marissa surely was. But Gary couldn't shake the conviction that he had to get inside. He was equally certain the woman with the paper was already there. "Drive around back." 

"That's more like it." Chuck threw the SUV into gear and rounded the corner, pulling up to the curb. Gary scanned the doors until he found the one for Family Life and Health. "Stay far away from bullets, that's my motto," Chuck went on. "I mean, the last thing you need is for some guy with a gun to be pointing it at you, right? If you're dead, it's going to be really hard to get you back home to your—" He broke off when Gary opened the car door and got out. "Don't be an idiot."

"You can't go in there," Marissa added, a panicky note in her voice.

"I have to." As if to drive the point home, Cat leapt out of the car and started toward the back entrance of the office. "You two keep clear, okay? Stay safe." He looked from Chuck's exasperated face to Marissa, who bit her lip. They were both right, of course. Like everything else about the past few days, what he was about to do made no sense. But Crumb always said police work was mostly going with the gut, and Gary was gut-sure he was supposed to be inside. What he was supposed to do once he got there, he had no idea. As usual. "Stay together. I'll be fine." He jogged off after Cat before they could say anything else.

The back door was unlocked, the ground around it littered with cigarette butts. He wasn't a big fan of smoking, but right now he was grateful someone in the office needed lots of outdoor breaks. He eased the door open, then glanced down at Cat. "You sure about this, buddy?"

Cat mewed and sat on his haunches.

"Yeah, me neither." He went in anyway. The first room off the hallway was a supply closet. He grabbed a bucket and a squeegee. Neither would work as a weapon, but he wasn't looking to take anyone out. He just needed a reason to walk into the office. The door at the other end of the hallway stood ajar. He could hear shouts through it but couldn't make out what was being said. 

He had to act like he was supposed to be there. A janitor on his daily rounds. Time to clean the windows. He wrapped one hand tight around the squeegee, the other around the bucket handle. He pursed his lips, but his mouth was too dry for a whistle. Settling for calling out, "Hey, guys, how's it going?" he nudged the door open with his shoulder and stepped through. There was a rumble under his feet that he guessed was some police or SWAT truck pulling into the lot.

"What the fuck!" 

Gary heard the shout in the same moment that he took in what he could of the scene: a handful of people in the room, huddled on the floor next to desks and chairs. The only one standing was a man with wavy brown hair and wide-set eyes.

Who held a gun, pointed at Gary.

* * * * *


	21. Chapter 21

_The point is no longer that quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily peculiar theory, but that the world is an extraordinarily peculiar place._  
_~N. David Mermin_

 

* * *

Chuck pulled up to the Happy Smile Dental Clinic and honked. And waited. And honked. And waited. Where the hell was Gary? He should have been done fifteen minutes ago.

He stopped the car and got out, determined to yank the guy away from whatever nurse he was flirting with. That was Chuck's job, after all. But as he reached for the door handle, something butted into his leg and let out a yowl.

"Aw, man, what are you doing here?"

In response, Cat streaked down the street and stopped at a pay phone. When Chuck reluctantly joined it, the tabby was pawing at a balled up piece of newspaper on the ground. "Is that the one I gave him?"  
Chuck unfurled the page. The first thing that caught his attention was a story about a hostage situation at an insurance agency, one that was not all that far away, he realized when he saw the address. Something about hostages and bystanders being shot. Not the kind of thing he normally would want to deal with. _Exactly_ the kind of thing Gary would normally rush into. But this wasn't that Gary, was it? 

That Gary, his Gary, would never have thrown away a crucial piece of information. Chuck went back to his car and rearranged the bulk of the paper, which he'd folded open to the page with the stories about the tree climber and the fireworks. And there it was on the front page, where it hadn't been that morning: HOSTAGES KILLED IN STANDOFF, GUNMAN AND BYSTANDERS INJURED. 

"Oh, shit." He turned to the cat, which had followed him to the car and now sat perched expectantly in his front seat. "What the hell?" The cat didn't answer.

Fireworks were officially de-prioritized. Chuck put in a call to information and got the family's home number, left a message on their machine telling them not to let the teenager shoot off M-80s in the backyard, and hoped it would be good enough. Hell, he deserved some kind of medal for even remembering that story in the wake of what had popped up. 

He wove through a handful of residential streets before he found one that ran into the strip mall's parking lot, creating a t-intersection. The block was closed off by police barricades and at least half a dozen cop cars with flashing lights. He parked on a side street and jogged up to the barricades, trying to get the nearest cop's attention, but the guy was too focused on the activity in the parking lot, and presumably in the insurance agency with the big glass windows, its blinds fully closed. Chuck took a mental snapshot. Never hurt to add to his arsenal of ideas for action-fueled plots.

"Fishman!"

He turned at the familiar shout. Crumb and Marissa wove their way through the growing crowd, with Spike creating a path for them. No matter how interested people were in disasters, they tended to shy away from a large, determined German Shepherd. "What are you doing here?" Chuck asked, already dreading the answer. 

"Hobson called her." Crumb thrust a thumb at Marissa, but his attention was on the scene unfolding in the parking lot. "What is wrong with these guys, coming in hot like this? They're going to get everyone in there killed." He went to the barricade and waved at the same cop who'd been ignoring Chuck. "Get your sergeant on the walkie, tell him M. Z. Crumb's here. Who's the detective in charge?" The guy snapped to attention and started filling Crumb in. 

"Gary called you?" Chuck asked Marissa.

"He said he'd wait for you at the dentist's office. He wasn't there?"

"Nope. I'm guessing that means he's in there?"

"I'm pretty sure it does," she said glumly. "I didn't think there was any way he'd walk into this."

"He must have changed his mind." Chuck filled her in on what he'd found a few blocks away. "Maybe the story changed. I have no idea why this wasn't in the paper this morning. Why would it—" He broke off as the ground under their feet shook. 

Marissa grabbed his sleeve. "What was that?"

"Probably a truck."

"That didn't feel like a truck. It felt like an earthquake."

"Oh, and how many of those have you experienced, Ms. Chicago?"

"What about you, Mr. Hollywood?"

"None yet, but I'm prepared."

"Always the Boy Scout."

"That's not me, that's Gary. Our Gary, anyway."

Marissa opened her mouth as if she had a retort ready, then tilted her head. "Our Gary," she echoed. "Remember what the Gary who's here said about how the ground shook right before he crossed over from his own reality into ours? What if that happened because both of them are here now? Not here, here, but what if there's something like this happening where our Gary is, in the same place, and he's involved in it just like this Gary is here?"

How was he supposed to follow that convoluted thinking when he could barely figure out which Gary they were talking about? "Look, I don't know what kind of _Back to the Future_ shtick you think is going on here—"

"It's not shtick. This is Gary's _life_ we're talking about, both of them, and if they're both being held hostage by desperate gunmen and causing earthquakes because of it, we have to figure out a way to help them." She shook off his arm and started forward, running right into the barricade despite Spike's attempt to block her path. 

"Marissa, hey." Chuck took her elbow and steadied her. A few yards away, Crumb glanced over at them with a scowl. As if Chuck could keep Marissa out of trouble, if that was where she was determined to go. To his surprise, though, she went still, a tiny eye in the hurricane of panic and intense curiosity swirling around them. She was thinking hard, Chuck realized, though what she came out with sounded more like something in one of his pitch meetings than the grounded reflection he expected from her.  
"When Gary went back in time to 1871, how did he get home?"

She wanted to talk about that? Now? He wasn't sure he could sell that plot, not even to Spielberg. If he could ever get a meeting with the guy. "We don't know for sure that he time traveled."

Marissa dismissed his objection with a wave of her hand. "Of course he did. And to get back home, he ran into a burning building. He got hit on the head by a falling beam. What if he thinks running into some deadly situation is going to get him home now? I won't stand by and let that happen."

"It was a construction site." People were starting to look at them, probably because they couldn't hear what was going on with the cops and thought this was equally entertaining. "He tripped and fell and dreamed it all."

"You still don't believe him?" She gave her arm an angry shake, dislodging his hand. "Is that why you left? Because you couldn't handle how weird the truth is? Because Hollywood somehow seems normal compared to what happens around here?"

"Marissa—"

"I'm telling you, he was hurt that time, and that's how he got home. Now he's about to get hurt again if he's in that building."

"Which him?"

"Both of them!" She sucked in a breath. "What if this is how we get him back?" 

"Okay, back up. Literally." Chuck took her elbow again and pulled her a couple more steps away from the barricade. For once, Spike seemed to agree with him and nudged her in the right direction. "I'm getting you out of here before they throw you in a paddy wagon along with the nutcase who's taking hostages."

"Don't know if he's a nutcase," Crumb said as he rejoined them. "They haven't made contact yet. Amateur hour," he muttered. "None of these guys knows a damn thing. Probably go in there with guns blazing."

Chuck glanced at Marissa, but she was tense and tight as the lamppost at her back. She was right. They had to do something, and at this point, thanks to the paper he probably knew more than anyone else about the situation inside. "Tell them the shooter is a guy who wants health insurance," he said to Crumb. "That can't be worth a bloodbath."

"How do you know?"

"You don't want me to answer that."

"You got that right."

"Gary's in there, too," Marissa said. "Those are two things you can tell the police."

"I tell them that, they'll think I'm the crazy one," Crumb muttered. "The only thing we've got going for us right now is that Hobson's been through this before. He knows what to do."

"This Gary hasn't been through it," Chuck pointed out. Crumb swore under his breath.

"We have to help him," Marissa insisted. "We're the ones who told him to do what our Gary does."

"What is this? We broke him, we bought him?" Chuck asked. 

"Something like that."

"I'm not the one who broke him," Chuck said, but a look crossed Marissa's face, something she wanted to say, something she would have said if Gary, didn't matter which one, hadn't been in that building with a gun pointed at him. If stray bullets didn't get them, he thought, the things they were choking on instead of saying out loud might kill them all. 

Marissa turned to Crumb. "You know this is what Gary—both Garys—need you to do. He relies on you. He needs you. The man in there doesn't know what you've taught our Gary about how to handle a person like this. And if something happens to him, how will our Gary get home? We can't lose either one of them." 

Crumb's jaw worked. Something had tipped the scales for him. Probably Marissa's eyes brimming with tears, which freaked Chuck out. She didn't cry, not like the women in his family did. "You two stay back," Crumb finally said. "Back, you hear me? I got one of the terrible trio to deal with in there. I don't want to have to babysit you two along with everything else."

When Crumb had crossed the barricade, Marissa swiped a fierce hand over her eyes and asked, "What does the paper say now?"

Chuck pulled it from his pocket. The headline had changed, but it was still dire. "It's—uh—"

"If you don't tell me the truth, I will sic Spike on your sorry ass."

He didn't want to read the story out loud, so he settled for a summary. "It's not good. The hostage taker dies, and so do two of the hostages and two cops."

"What about Gary?"

"It doesn't list any names, but there's a picture of the police talking to some of the hostages. He's not one of them."

Marissa responded with a word Chuck hadn't realized she knew.

* * * * *

When Cage grabbed the girl, Gary leapt to his feet again, but doubled over as pain shot through his ribs. Luis pulled him down. "Play it cool. This guy's on a hair trigger."

Cage was too focused on the girl to notice. He gripped her arm and waved the gun under her nose. She set her jaw and glared at him. "You're going to look out the window for me," Cage told her. "You're gonna—" He interrupted himself with a sneezing fit, and for the first time, the girl flinched. After sucking what sounded like a gallon of snot back down his throat, Cage added, "Tell me everything you see. Everything. You got that?" He pushed her to the window, moving behind her. "Look between the blinds."

The cheap blinds rattled as she lifted one of the slats. "There's two—no, three cop cars." Her voice was rough; Gary couldn't tell if it was with anger or fear. "They've set up barricades on the other side of the parking lot." 

"Where are the snipers?"

"How should I know?"

"You've got eyes! Look!" Cage shoved the back of her head, flattening her face against the blinds and the window itself. 

Gary tried to get up again, but Luis held him in place. "You're making it worse, can't you see?"

How could it possibly get worse? Gary shifted into a crouch, ready to jump back up if he had to, and tried to remember what Crumb had taught him about negotiating. _Keep this guy calm, that's the most important thing_. It had only been a couple months since Crumb had said that about John Hernandez, since his voice crackling though a phone had been Gary's lifeline in another hostage situation.

"What's he want?" he whispered to Luis.

Luis's dark eyes clouded; the lines around his mouth deepened. "We denied him health insurance and he started waving a gun. Said if we didn't give him two thousand dollars and a full policy he'd send one of _us_ to the hospital."

He still might, Gary thought. Cage seemed more unhinged than Hernandez had been at Rachel Stone's house. He pushed the girl into the window and insisted she look harder. "What about her?" Gary asked Luis. "Why is she here?"

"No idea. She walked in off the street babbling about a gas leak just before Cage showed up. Then when he pulled the gun she tried to talk him out of it. You know her?"

"Not exactly."

"Come _on_ ," Cage shouted in the girl's ear. "Find the snipers, damn it!"

"There's one," she gasped. "Up on the roof of the house across the street." 

"There have to be more." 

"I can't see any—ow!" she yelped as he pushed her face into the window again.

"There'll be four," Gary called. Cage whirled on him and released the girl. She sank to the ground, burying her face in her hands. Well aware of the innocent people around him, Gary put his hands in the air and struggled to his feet. In the back of his brain, Crumb was telling him to keep Cage talking so he'd have less time to shoot. "There'll be four snipers. That's how many they used last time I was a hostage."

Cage's eyes narrowed as he took a step toward Gary. A rivulet of sweat ran from his forehead to his chin. "So you _are_ a cop."

"If I were a cop, they'd know I was here. They wouldn't have believed you when you told them there were only five hostages. And if they thought a cop had been in here when you fired that shot, they would have stormed the place, wouldn't they?" Gary was babbling, but he tried to sound sure. He edged toward the back hallway.

"Where are you going?" Cage asked warily. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

"If you decide to shoot me, I don't want anyone else getting hurt. I'm telling you, I've been a hostage before." Gary shifted his weight so he could see the girl by the window. She'd lifted her head; there were cuts on her face from the aluminum blinds and a red spot on her forehead, the beginning of a bad bruise. He didn't see a newspaper, which worried him. "This your first time doing this?" 

"Of course it's my first time! I'm not a criminal. I just want insurance!" Cage waved the gun, but it was the girl Gary looked to for an answer. She nodded once. 

Gary's voice came out in a whisper. "I think I can help you." 

"How does being a hostage make you an expert?" Cage took another step toward Gary. 

"Anybody here got more experience?" Gary asked, trying to keep Cage from noticing the girl again. Over by the reception desk, three heads shook. "Do you?" he asked Cage, then went on without waiting for an answer. "The police aren't going anywhere until they know these people are safe. You have to let them go."

"Oh, right, and then the cops storm in here and kill me!"

"Calm down." Gary held out his hands and tried to keep his voice steady. "Everyone here wants a happy ending." Hernandez hadn't gotten one, but at least he'd had a moment of humanity at the end, a moment free of the rage and vengeance that had driven him for a decade. Maybe this was Gary's chance to create a better ending than the one he'd managed for Hernandez.

"What are you, Tinkerbelle? I just want insurance, for God's sake! I work my butt off day after day and I can't even afford a lousy handful of antibiotics!" He leveled the gun at Luis. "What the hell is wrong with you people? Four years, four _years_ with Nadia, and she leaves me for some guy with an HMO! Now I've got nobody, and I can't even get rid of a lousy sinus infection! And I'm stuck in this—" Cage sneezed again, sucked back more snot, and grabbed at his hair with the hand that wasn't waving the gun. "God!" 

"You-you st-still have people who believe in you. Your mom, she thinks you're a good guy." The girl's voice was a soft quaver, but it got Cage's attention. He stalked over and grabbed her arm, yanking her up.

"Take it easy," Gary breathed. _No sudden moves_ , Crumb chastised, but Gary took a step toward Cage and the girl.

"What the fuck do you know about my mom?" Cage demanded.

"She's in my church group." The girl's insistence tinged into desperation. "She sent me to find you."

"My mom doesn't go to church!" He shoved her back into the window so hard the blinds and glass rattled, and she sank to the ground. Cage aimed the gun at her face. "You don't know a damn thing!"

"Cage!" Gary shouted. "Leave her alone, listen to me." Cage whirled on him. "Just listen, okay? I know how to get you out of this." The truth was, he had no idea how to get any of them out of it, but he had to get Cage away from the girl. She wasn't going to be another Nate Hill.

_Show him respect_ , Crumb would have said if he hadn't been blown to pieces, if he had listened to Nate. Who'd failed who, and why was Gary worrying about that now? _Let him think he's in charge, and that you're on his side_. "Look, Mr. Cage, you have the element of surprise working for you. You let these people go, and the cops will think they've won." 

"Oh, sure, and then they'll have a nice clear shot at me. No thanks, Professor Expert."

"Don't listen to him," the young woman said, flashing an inexplicably angry look at Gary. "He's no one."

"That's not true. I'm the most valuable hostage you have, because they don't know about me. I'm your wild card." Gary kept his voice even, his eyes wide. "I'll stay, and once these people are gone, you can walk out of here with me, and they won't be able to shoot you." Unless they thought Gary was an accomplice, in which case they'd shoot the both of them. He gulped. The girl took advantage of Cage's distraction to look under the desk next to her, where the kid was hiding. Gary heard a muffled, "Dude," as he continued, "They'll have to let you—let _us_ go. They won't shoot you if you're with a hostage."

For a moment, the madness in Cage's eyes seemed to lift. He seemed to actually be thinking about it. "My Saturn's parked outside."

"Well, there you go, nothing to worry about." _Let him think he can escape_ , Crumb said. _Once he knows he's trapped, there's no telling what he'll do_. "We can leave in your car. Tell them you'll shoot me if they try to follow us." 

Behind Cage, the girl shook her head frantically. She pointed to her watch and circled a finger, mouthing, "Stall." 

"Or, maybe we can—we can—make this even better," Gary stammered, sorting through memories for a way to buy time.

"How?" Cage demanded, backing Gary up against an empty desk.

"You've got them where you want them. You can ask for anything you want. Why stick with a Saturn? If they're dumb enough to come after you, you want to make a clean getaway. Something fast."

Cage's mouth twisted into a smile, which was immediately distorted by a sneeze. "A Porsche."

"A Porsche would be great. I've always wanted to ride in a Porsche. If Nadia was impressed by an HMO, what'll she think if you show up in a Porsche? Let everyone else go while they get it for you. I'll stay." The girl mouthed something that looked a lot like _shut the fuck up_ , but Gary finished, "We'll get out of here free and clear."

"What about my insurance policy?"

"Well, sure, we can get you that. First class, right?" Gary looked back at Luis, who nodded. 

"Sure, Mr. Cage, any policy you want."

"No co-pay?"

"We don't—" Luis started, but at Gary's look he coughed and said, "You know what, I'll cover that myself."

Cage nodded. "Okay, then. They get me the car." He waved the gun around the room to indicate the other hostages. "You get me a decent policy, and I'll let you go." The gun ended up pointed right at Gary. "All but him."

"No. No, not him." The girl's voice squeaked as she stood. Her bandana slipped off the back of her head and her curls sprang out. For the life of him, Gary couldn't understand what she was doing. She had a baby to think about. "Take me instead."

"I'm a better shield," Gary countered. "And with me you'll have the element of surprise."

"Don't be a moron!"

Cage whirled on her. "Don't tell me what to do, bitch!" He drew back his shooting hand, as if to pistol whip her in the face. Gary grabbed his arm and Cage spun back around, shaking himself free of Gary's grip, pushing the gun into Gary's chest and backing him into the desk again. " _He's_ my hostage, because I'm going to enjoy shooting him. You get over there with the rest of them."

She looked from Cage to Gary. "Please." Though Gary wasn't sure what she was asking, he recognized her desperation. However long she'd been getting the paper, whatever stories she'd missed, she hadn't ever lost anyone, not like this, not when it was happening right in front of her. Not like Nate Hill had lost Crumb. 

"Go!" Cage reached for her, but she ducked his hand and backed up to the row of people at the reception desk, then slid down to the floor. The whole time, her eyes never left Gary's. 

"I gotta think," Cage muttered, pulling at his hair.

"You do that." Gary sidled over to the reception desk and sat down next to the girl. While Cage stalked around the room, she swiped at a cut on her cheek, then scowled at the smear of blood on the back of her hand. The older woman pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and passed it down the row to her. "Here, let me help," Gary started, but she snatched it out of his reach.

"You can't do this," she said as she dabbed at the cut. "He'll kill you."

"I've done this before. I know how it goes."

"You don't know anything!" It must have sounded like anger to everyone else, but Gary watched with horrified recognition as the struggle to find something, anything, to say or do that would change a story in the paper played out on her face. She was scared of failing these people, including him, even though she didn't know them. She didn't know what to do, but she was doing it anyway. "Your name is Gary Hobson, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Despite the older woman at the other end of the desk frantically shushing them, he managed a grin that he hoped would put her at ease. "Thelma, right? Or are you Daphne?"

"Forget Thelma and Daphne! This isn't the comics and you aren't Superman." She crumpled the handkerchief in her fist. "You're not bullet proof and if you know how I know that, and how I know your name, then you know that I know you _will_ die if you stay with him."

The phone started ringing. Cage paced in a circle around the desk nearest the window.

"Must not have many good tippers come into that diner of yours if you remember me from yesterday." 

She shook her head, sending her curls flying. "Mr. Hobson, don't do this."

"I'm not going to let him hurt anybody. And you need to stay alive for your baby. Let me handle this. I really have done it before." Gary started to his feet, but she grabbed a handful of his sleeve.

"Don't let him get behind you. He'll shoot you in the back," she said in a rush. 

Gary squeezed her hand, then pulled it free. He went over to the desk, hobbling a little because his entire torso ached with every movement. Cage was fumbling with the gun and the handset. He could have made a grab for the gun, but Gary didn't trust recklessness to fix such a volatile situation. "Put the phone on speaker," he told Cage instead.

"I don't know how!" He turned the gun on the row of hostages. "Where's the receptionist?"

Luis nodded at the older woman. "It's okay, Marie. Just show him how to do it."

She tottered to the phone, picked up the handset, punched a button, and scuttled back to her place. 

"Sir, are you there?" said the voice through the speaker. Female. Deep, a little rough around the edges. Tagliotti. "You have to give me something, sir. At least tell me the names of the people there, if you won't tell me yours. I'd like to notify their families. You do the right thing, maybe I can help you."

Cage stared at Gary for an endless, tortured moment. Then he took a deep breath and nodded. "Let's make a deal."

* * * * *

Marissa had never wanted to be a cheerleader, not in high school when Gayle had tried to talk her into it, and certainly not now. She didn't want to stand on the sidelines while others did the real work, whether that work was scoring points or saving lives. "Let's get closer," she said to Chuck, and signaled Spike to lead the way. The sun beat down on them with summer ferocity, making every sound and movement that much more intense.

"Crumb said to stay back," Chuck warned.

"I can't hear anything." She wrenched her elbow free of his restraining hand. "Gary needs us. He's never done this before." She put one hand out and touched a piece of wood—the barricade, Chuck told her. "I don't understand why he didn't wait for you and leave this to Crumb."

"He must have seen something that changed his mind. Something in the paper."

"Down!" The shout came from the other side of the barricade, but Marissa and Chuck both ducked. Judging by the rush of air and squeals around them, everyone did.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"I don't know. Maybe the cops made contact."

"I want all you people back. Back!"

"Let's at least get some space," Chuck said, and she let him guide her to the side. Spike wasn't much help in the confusion of the crowd around them. Her skin cooled instantly; he must have found a spot under a shade tree. The ground shook again, a faint rumble that tickled the soles of her feet.

"Another earthquake?" The snark in Chuck's voice was no doubt a result of his own worry, but it put her back up. 

"It wasn't a truck."

"You really think they're both in there?"

"Not exactly _there_ , but what if the two universes are touching?"

"I sure as hell don't see Gary—our Gary—anywhere."

"This is Chicago PD!" Crumb's voice boomed through the megaphone. "We need you to answer that call."

Marissa sighed out her own frustrations as she tried to put the pieces together. "Maybe Gary can't get through right now. If he's somewhere like this, _exactly_ like this, he must have known it was going to happen." She choked on a realization. "He must have found the person who gets the paper in that reality." 

"What if there is no magic paper there, did you ever think of that? What if he's there—or here—because of his own bumbling sheer dumb luck and now he's caught up in this and he doesn't have his crutch? Crutches," he added as Crumb called again for the hostage taker to pick up the phone. "He'll get himself killed without us. How'll he get home then?"

"Gary can handle himself."

"What if he can't? And what about the Gary we've been stuck with the past few days? What if he's learning how to do this because he's stuck here permanently?"

"Then we'll make it work." Though a small knot in her chest tightened at the thought he might be right, Chuck's melodramatic refusal to listen to her made her sound more stubbornly hopeful than she actually felt. "The paper hasn't stopped coming, so it's still our responsibility."

"I won't be able to help this guy when I go back to California."

"I don't care how many thousand miles away you move. Gary is still your friend and the paper's still with him and that means—"

"Shut it."

"Chuck!"

"No, I mean, I heard—hold on."

Then she heard it too: one of the cops making a radio call for an ambulance. "Got at least one gunshot wound," the voice was saying. "Not sure who or how bad."

"Oh, God," she whispered. 

"It's him, isn't it?" Chuck snapped. "He didn't want to be here, didn't want to be doing this. He—how does our Gary stuff this thing in his back pocket all the damn time?" He shook the newspaper so she could hear its pages rattle. "It's not this Gary's responsibility."

"It is if he chose to go in."

"I'm pretty damned sure he didn't choose to get _killed_. Even if he lives through this, he'll be harder than ever to keep in line. And why are we trying to keep him in line anyway? I mean, if he doesn't want to do it, and it's not really his job, why keep pushing it?"

"Because there's something he has to learn from it. Will you just read me what the paper says?"

Crumb's amplified voice boomed over the crowd. "Jason Greer! My name is Zeke Crumb. I'm asking you to please pick up the phone so we can get you what you need. You didn't mean for it to come to this. We all know that. I want to help you. You have friends out here who want this to end peacefully."

There was a breathless pause. No response, at least not one Marissa could hear, but no bullets flying either. In the next moment, Chuck's elbow jostled hers and the newspaper rustled. "Oh, no."

"What is it?" But she knew. The rough, scared note in his voice told her before his words did.

"He's going out the back way now. There are fewer dead. Few enough to name."

"Chuck—"

"The hostage taker, Jason Greer. And Gary."

"We have to get to Crumb."

"He doesn't want to know!"

"He needs to know. If you won't tell him, give me the paper and I'll show him."

"You want to give the guy a heart attack so we lose him, too?"

"We have to do _something_."

The paper rustled again, and Chuck cleared his throat. Familiar footsteps clomped their way. "All right, you two, what gives?" Crumb demanded. "I don't want to know how you know, but if there's a clusterwreck about to go down, I need to know what and when."

"It's Gary," Chuck said. "The hostage taker is going to try to walk out the back door with Gary as a shield, and he'll get a bullet in Gary before any of your people can stop him. Right in the head, Crumb."

Something inside Marissa froze. "You didn't tell me that." 

"Because I know you. You'll want to run around back and try to save him and then there'll be another mess for the cops to clean up!"

She bit back a retort. For as gracelessly as he'd put it, Chuck was right. She couldn't stop this. She was stuck cheering on the sidelines again, and she hated it. 

"Backdoor? Shit," Crumb muttered. "Give me details. Don't bother telling me where they come from, just fill me in."

She'd brought Crumb, Marissa thought as Chuck sketched out the horrifying scenario. Even if it was the only thing she could do, it might have been the best thing, at least for Gary.

"We're going to get him out of there in one piece," Crumb promised before he went back to the police. "You two stay put and let me know if the—" He stopped, cleared his throat. "Uh, if Hobson's crystal ball changes."

"Has it?" Marissa asked as soon as he left.

"Geez, give me a minute to breathe, will you?" But Chuck was already wrestling with the paper. "It's still the same story. Maybe Crumb needs time to make it change."

"Maybe." Marissa sent up a silent prayer that it would, soon, and then another prayer that someone was up there listening. She tried hard to ignore the insidious voice telling her that if praying was all she could do, she really wasn't anything more than a cheerleader.

* * * * *


	22. Chapter 22

_You and I are two of a kind_  
 _Restless spirits of the same mind_  
 _We know about the risks and yet we stay_  
 _We're brave or crazy or stubborn that way_  
_~Carrie Newcomer_

 

* * *

Crumb's shouts got Greer to pick up the phone, but he didn't seem to be listening to whatever the police had to say.

"What?" Greer snapped so fiercely Gary half expected him to bite the receiver. "No! No, I don't want—what? No, everyone's okay in here. Yeah, there were shots earlier, but that was because this moron tried to stop me from firing my gun! Yeah, I hit him. But he's not dead. I want that clear, okay? I'm not a murderer, and you're not going to treat me like one. I'm a mechanic, damn it, and I just want to be able to go to a doctor if I get a cold or if a damn Buick falls on me! No. No. _No_. Look, if you don't shut the fuck up with the damn questions, I'm going to shoot the guy who's bleeding again. I don't know his fucking name. No, I'm not putting you on the speaker phone. You're dealing with me. Yes, I promise, he's still alive. What, my word's not good enough? I'm telling you, I'm serious about this! I need a car. I need to get the fuck out of here. And I need insurance!" Greer slammed the phone down and paced around the office in an uneven circuit. Gary tried not to flinch every time Greer stalked past him. He paused at one turn and wiped his forehead with his hand. "Damn it, this low rent place doesn't even have air conditioning?"

"I guess it's stopped working," Cuevas said. He glanced over at Latasha.

Gary tried not to think about the fact that his arm was still bleeding. It wasn't as bad as before, but there was fresh red every time he looked under the makeshift bandage. At least he wasn't staining one of his tailored suits. All but one were back home, where he was supposed to be. Earlier Marissa had said there was a reason he wasn't; he wondered if she could tell him the reason he was here. Or if he'd ever have a chance to ask. 

The ground beneath them shook. This time everyone noticed. "We don't have earthquakes in Illinois, do we?" Franklin's eyes were wide and dark blue; his was the face of a man watching his world unravel.

"Actually, we're not far from a fault line," Cuevas said. "Maybe this is the big one. Wouldn't surprise me, the way this day is going."

"The big one's supposed to happen in California," Latasha said. "Last I looked, we're a long way from LA."

"Great," Greer muttered. "Next you'll tell me I can't get homeowner's insurance either."

Gary's headache was a monster; the buzzing arguments around him were stinging flies that wouldn't let the monster lie down and rest. Those giant, relentless horseflies that had attacked on a fishing trip to the Boundary Waters with his dad when he was thirteen. Had that been real? Was anything he remembered real? The only way to know, he supposed, was to get through this, but he could feel numbness coming on, and he'd happily give way to it if he wasn't worried, with the part of his brain that was still coherent, that doing so would probably get him killed. 

Reasons or not, he hadn't done anything to deserve this. Neither had Cuevas or Franklin, or Crumb or Marissa or the cops or Latasha and her kids. It was supposed to end one way—or two or three, if he counted the changing stories—but now he could make a better one.

Next to him, Cuevas gnawed on a thumbnail. Gary waited until Greer was at the farthest point of his orbit, then whispered. "Isn't there some way we can get him health insurance?"

"I can't get a valid policy through with his health record." 

"Does he have to know that?"

"You saying I should fake it?"

"You have to try," Gary said. "If this guy doesn't get something soon, he's going to kill us all."

"I heard that!" Greer stomped over to them. Gary couldn't tell if he meant to wave the gun between them, or if his had was shaking too much to control it. "Stop talking about me, or I will put a bullet right in your brain!"

"You—" Gary gulped. "You don't want to do that." He really hoped that was true. At this point, even Greer probably didn't know what he actually wanted. 

All Gary wanted was to get out. Preferably not in a body bag.

"You still sound like a cop." Greer crouched down. The gun kept quavering. "You sure there's nothing you want to tell me?"

"I'm not a cop. I just know one. That one," Gary said when Crumb's voice echoed from outside, this time calling Greer by name. He wasn't sure if he should tell Greer Crumb was technically an ex-cop. 

"I shot a cop's friend?" Greer's face greyed over; he rocked back on his heels while the phone's ringing finally cut off. "I'm never getting out of here alive." 

Gary couldn't let him go any farther down that thought trail, or none of them would survive. He reached for something, anything, he could offer the guy. "My wife's a lawyer. She'll help you."

"Lawyer?" Greer rocketed to his feet and backpedalled away from them. "I shot her husband. She'll put me away!"

"You're making it worse," Cuevas muttered to Gary.

"I saved your life!" Wasn't anyone around here going to be grateful for what he'd done? Didn't he at least get points for trying? "Why don't you make it better and get him a policy?"

Cuevas huffed out a breath. "It'll take some time, but it seems like we have plenty of that. Okay. Hey, Greer—"

He was interrupted by the phone ringing again. Greer looked from the desk to the hostages and back. "Look," Cuevas said, "if you answer that and talk to them, I'll try again. I may be able to hook you up with a policy. Our premium policy," he added when Greer still looked hesitant. He got to his feet. "Talk to them, and I'll go over to my desk, okay?"

Greer threw his hands over his ears. "Yeah yeah yeah, fine. Just make the noise stop!"

"You can do that by answering the phone," Gary pointed out. Some shred of what they were saying must have gotten through to Greer, because he picked up the receiver and waved Luis to his desk. 

"What? No, I want insurance and a way out of here. Clean and safe, man, clean and safe. I don't _care_ what kind of car. What? Fine. Fine!" He turned to Gary. "Get over here."

Gary stood, waited for the whorl of black and teeth-gritting pain to clear, then went to the desk. Greer handed him the phone. "Hello?"

"Hobson?" Crumb's voice was craggy and contained, as always, and for the first time Gary realized it was a voice he could lean on. "You hurt?"

"He shot my arm." 

Greer pressed in. "Tell him you're fine."

"Bullet go through or is it still in there?"

"I don't know. Still bleeding. It hurts." Gary flinched as Greer pushed the gun into his ribs.

"You have to keep him talking, kid," Crumb said quickly, as if he knew Greer was hovering over Gary, ready to take the phone away. 

Gary knew he didn't have long, and if he was going to save them all, he had to tell Crumb what he knew. "You have to stay back. You and Marissa, stay out of range."

"Who the fuck is Marissa?" Greer yanked the phone out of Gary's hand. Gary swayed, woozy, and suddenly he couldn't hold himself up any more. He slumped down to the floor. What had he been thinking? He had no clue how to do this. 

"He's barely even bleeding!" Greer told Crumb. "I'm not letting anyone go until I know I can get to a hospital or a doctor or a God damned pharmacy! I worked my whole life. This isn't fair!"

He stomped a few steps away, until the phone cord brought him up short. "No. What, you think I'm stupid?" He turned and stared at Gary. "What do I get in return?...I'm _not_ a murderer. He's barely even bleeding anymore!...Yeah? Yeah, okay. I'll think about it. You get all the cops out there to back the hell off." He hung up the phone and stalked back to stand over Gary. "Your cop buddy says I should let you go. Let them put you in an ambulance to prove I'm not a murderer. What do you think about that, Mr. Hero?"

One nod, that was all it would take, and he'd be out of there. Nothing that happened after that would be his responsibility. He'd be at a hospital, where other people would be taking care of him for a change.

He looked at the rest of the hostages. At Luis, at Franklin, at Latasha. Then back at Greer. Who would be his responsibility no matter how far away that ambulance took him. He jerked his head toward Latasha. "She's got nothing to do with this, and there are three little kids who need her. Let her go instead."

Greer stared hollowly at her, then at Gary, who couldn't have guessed at the calculations going on in his mind if he'd been given a million dollars to do so. 

"You're more likely to get what you want if you make a big gesture like this," Gary tried. "You already told them I'm not in any real danger. This way you look sympathetic. Women and children first, and all that." He glanced at Latasha, who stared at him with both hands covering her mouth. "No offense, I just—"

"Oh, no, I'll go," she whispered, lowering her hands. "I'll definitely go."

"Fine, you wanna—" Greer broke off, throwing his hands in the air, then lowering the one holding the gun at Gary. "Fine." He nodded at Latasha. "Go. But you walk out that door slow, you keep your hands out, you stop in front of the door so you block me while I get a good look at them, you hear me? Tell them I let you go instead of him because I'm a good guy, because this isn't me. It's like he said, a show of good faith. Up, get up. You try anything funny, I'll shoot you in the back, and then all of them." 

She nodded and stood, hands up in the air. "I just want to go home to my kids. That's all." She took a couple steps away from the group, then looked back at Gary. Opened her mouth, as though she was going to say something, but Greer grabbed her shoulder and pushed her to the door. She stumbled, but managed to stay on her feet. She opened the door a crack. Shouts erupted from the parking lot as the door opened wider and she stepped into the sunlight. Greer crouched behind her for a second or two, then let the door fall closed and turned the manual lock. 

He turned back to the three men, waving the gun at them. "All right, they got what they wanted. What next?"

* * * * *

"It's hot in here." Cage swiped his forehead, then his nose, and paced another circle around the room. He'd told Tagliotti he'd send the hostages out once they got him the Porsche. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Or so Gary hoped.

"Standard procedure. They shut down the air conditioning," Gary leaned on the empty desk, bracing himself against the impulse to slide down to the floor and shut his eyes until the whole thing was over. His temples were pounding again. Had to be some kind of stress headache. "They don't want you to get too comfortable."

Cage stopped and stared at him for a moment, then paced away, muttering something under his breath. At least he hadn't threatened to shoot anyone since he'd talked to Tagliotti. Luis was at the desk in the back, making up some kind of insurance policy. He and the older man had both taken off their suit coats and ties. The older woman, Marie, hadn't moved since she'd shown Cage how to use the phone. She sat close to the reception desk with her head bowed, hands folded. Gary hoped she had a direct line to whoever was in charge in this universe.

As for the girl with the paper, she had edged herself away from the reception area, toward the desk where the young man had hidden himself. She extended a foot toward the closest corner of the desk, as if she wanted to slide something out from under it. One guess as to what.

"Dude," the kid whispered desperately at her foot. Gary rolled his eyes. His impulse was to move toward the girl and what he hoped was the paper, but the last thing he wanted to do was draw Cage's attention to her.

"Come on out," Gary told the kid. It couldn't be very comfortable under the desk, and if he grabbed Cage's notice, maybe the girl could get the paper. "He's going to let you go."

Cage stopped and glared at Gary. "Not until I get my policy and my Porsche!" He swiveled the gun toward the girl. "What the fuck are you doing?"

She froze. "I got tired of sitting still."

"You'll sit still if I tell you to!"

"Fine, whatever." She didn't go any closer to her target, but she didn't move back to the reception desk either.

The phone rang again, startling all of them. The girl mouthed something Gary couldn't make out. He raised his brows, but she clamped her lips together when Cage stalked past. This time, he put the phone on speaker on his own. Over by the reception desk, Gary saw a weird shimmer of light, flickering silver. It was familiar, but he couldn't remember where he'd seen it before. 

"What?"

"We have the car," Tagliotti's voice carried to every corner of the office. "Are you ready to go?"

Cage looked to Luis, who held up a printout and nodded.

"Guess so," Cage said.

"Send the hostages out one at a time," Tagliotti said. "I want everyone to make it through this safely. Wait one minute in between. You have a watch?"

"Yeah, yeah. You really got a Porsche out there?"

"Come to the window, see for yourself."

The veins in his neck bulged. "I'm not stupid, lady!" He waved the gun, as though Tagliotti could see it. "I'm not going to make myself a target, you hear me?"

Gary moved toward the window as slowly as he could, his hands held out palms forward. He ignored a whispered, "Dude!" and said, "I'll look."

"Mr. Cage, no one's going to shoot you," Tagliotti said. "We all want this to end with everyone in one piece, and that includes you."

"Not gonna shoot me, right. You got four snipers out there, don't you?" He nodded triumphantly at Gary.

"Don't let him get behind you," the girl's whisper was a barely audible hiss. Gary started to nod, but Cage took a step closer and shoved the gun into his ribs.

"I'm not stupid," Cage whispered, eyes darting to the phone. "They're not supposed to know about you." He waved the gun at the young woman. "You go look." 

She got to her feet, ducked around Cage, and walked to the window alone, pushing up a slat with a finger. "It's there," she said. "Parked a few spaces down. It's blue."

"You'd better not be lying." He grabbed her arm and yanked her around.

"Why would I lie?" How could she look that angry and that scared, both at the same time? Gary stepped toward them, but Tagliotti's voice stopped him.

"Everyone okay in there? Send them out one at a time. Let's go." Gary couldn't blame the detective for running out of patience, but he was pretty sure Crumb would have handled it differently. 

"I know!" Cage shouted.

"Start _now_ , Cage!" 

"On my time!" Releasing the girl, Cage grabbed the whole phone and threw it at the side wall. The cord ripped free of its outlet and took a chunk of drywall with it; the phone shattered into plastic chunks, which rained down on the reception desk. "I'm sick of bitches who think they can tell me what to do." He swung the gun toward the girl. "Like you."

"No!" Gary pushed his way between them, holding out his arms. "Calm down. You have what you want, so let's send these people out."

"You said you know how to do this," the girl whispered between her teeth. Cage's jaw was as rigid as a cement block, his eyes little more than slits, but those slits were enough to let his anger shine through. The girl grabbed Gary's arm and tried to get around him, but he moved with her, determined to keep himself in the middle.

"The sooner you get them out of here, the sooner you can surprise that cop," Gary told Cage. "You can show her who's really in charge." Behind him, the girl went still.

Cage stared him down for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, yeah, that'd be good, yeah."

Gary backed a couple steps toward the door, which forced the girl in that direction along with him. "You want to let this young lady walk out first? She's closest, right?" 

Cage's face reddened. "No! I decide!" 

Damn it. 

"Him first." Cage waved the gun at the reception desk. The old man hauled himself up, wincing, and edged toward the door. Behind Gary, the girl moved a few steps back. Gary heard a familiar rustle, and turned his head just enough to see her sliding a copy of the _Sun-Time_ s out from under the desk with the toe of her red Converse sneaker.

"Wait!" Cage shouted. The old man froze, and Gary took a step to the side, trying to hide the girl. Cage turned to him and pushed the gun barrel into his chest. Gary couldn't help but gasp, which made the girl turn her glare back to him. "Nobody says anything about the damn janitor." Cage looked around the room, staring each of them down in turn. As if they were paying attention to anything else. "Nobody. If that cop finds out I have another hostage before I want her to, if any one of you so much as breathes funny and lets her know what's going on, I'll shoot everyone!"

The older man snorted. "You won't be able to shoot us if we're not here." 

"Him. I'll shoot him. That's what I meant." Cage jabbed the gun into Gary's ribs, and dark blobs popped into his vision. "It'll be your fault if he dies." 

The girl sucked in a breath, but Gary reached back, found her arm, and squeezed tight. A rumble vibrated through his shoes. "It won't happen, so there's nothing to worry about," he told Cage, in as calm a voice as he could find. "This is your show. We're all going to do exactly what you say, and everything's going to be fine. Nobody's getting shot today."

"Mr. Cage!" Tagliotti's megaphoned voice seemed to cut right through the front window. "It's time. Start sending them out." Gary could see the war play out on Cage's face. He didn't want to do what Tagliotti told him to do, but he wanted this thing over as much as the rest of them. 

"It's okay." Shaking off his hand, the girl stepped out from behind Gary and away from the paper. Her voice softened, as though she'd found some measure of control. "It's okay. We're not going to say a thing about him. We all just want to go home, right?" She waited while the others nodded. "We want this plan to work." She kicked Gary's foot, and he jumped. "We're going to do this the way you want."

Cage gave her a snarly look, but he waved the old man to the door, following on his heels. The man moved even more slowly this time, his hands halfway up. "Open the door, then stop and count to ten so I can get a peek at that car."

While Cage's attention was on the man and the door, Gary eased a hand down on the girl's shoulder. "You're doing great," he whispered under the rush of sounds from outside, but she shook her head and kicked his foot again. He looked down and saw the paper—or the top part of it. The headline read TWO DEAD IN HOSTAGE STANDOFF, and he could make out the top of a photo of the scene just below it. 

Maybe it would be like time travel. The only way home from 1871 had been to run into the source of the Chicago Fire. He remembered heat and flames and something hard landing on his head, and then he'd woken up in 1998. Maybe getting shot here would send him home. But what would that do to the Gary Hobson who was supposed to be here? What if the other guy came back in the same place he was now, just in time to get shot and killed? What would that do to the girl?

She crossed her arms and glared at him. "You're walking right into this. You're making it happen!"

"I'll be okay," he started to tell her, but at that moment Cage told the old man to go. The door fell shut, muffling the shouts outside. Gary hoped Chuck and Marissa were somewhere out of the way, somewhere they couldn't witness the mess that was about to go down if the girl's paper was right. How could he tell them and this girl he was going to be okay, even if Cage did shoot him? He knew damn well she'd blame herself. It would weaken her, the way Crumb's death had weakened Nate.

"Whatever happens is on me, not you," he said hurriedly. "You can't blame—"

"Hey!" Cage whirled on them. He stalked over and grabbed the girl by the arm, and Gary could have kicked himself. "What the hell are you up to now?"

"Nothing," she gasped.

"It's okay. She's scared, she's just a kid, will you let go of her?" Gary grabbed her other arm, wanting to get her out of Cage's reach, but she wrenched herself free.

"Keep your hands off me. Both of you!"

"I've got the gun. I'll do whatever I want!"

Luis pushed into the melee, hands out. "Hold on, you guys, we're almost out of here."

"What the hell is wrong with you people?" Cage shouted, turning the gun on Luis.

"Nothing! Here's the policy." Luis held out a sheaf of official-looking papers with one hand and pointed at the wall clock with the other. "It's been a minute. You'd better let someone else go."

Another moment tottering on the edge of a cliff. _The Cliffs of Insanity_ , Gary thought with a grimace; it was a line from some movie Chuck was always quoting. Cage snatched the papers out of Luis's hand. "Her," he said, pointing the gun at Marie, who still cowered by the reception desk. "She's next." She tottered to the door, stepping outside just as Tagliotti called for another release on her megaphone. Cage stayed near the door, trying to peer out.

Gary took the chance to ask, "What's your name?" When the girl shot him an incredulous look, he said, "C'mon, it's only fair, you know mine. Dying man's last wish?"

She glared at him again. He wondered how many tips that look earned her. "Tess," she finally said, hissing the "s" between her teeth. 

"I'm not going to die, Tess, I promise." He shot another look at the paper, squinting to make out details of what was supposed to go down, but she turned and faced him, drawing herself up tall and whispering it all in a rush. 

"He shoots you in the leg and forces you into the car and drives away. They'll find you a few blocks later lying in the street shot in the back. You're fucking _dead_. A few blocks after that and they shoot out his tires and he crashes into a laundromat and puts three more people in the hospital."

"He won't. I won't. I'm going to fix this, and if I don't, it's on me. You go take care of your baby."

She kicked the paper back under the desk so that just the first two words of the headline were visible. "What good is a warning if you won't—"

Cage stuck the gun between them. "I've had enough of this crap. Whoever the hell you people are, I'm done with you. She's next."

"Go," Gary told Tess.

"Yeah, go," Cage said. "Just remember what happens to him if you breathe a word."

Her eyes got wider as she looked from the spot where the paper had been, to Gary, and then to Cage. "I'll never tell, I swear," she said, wiping at the cut on her cheek. 

The muscles along Cage's jaw worked. "Go!" he shouted. She went, but not without one last look back. Gary nodded. She winced, squared her shoulders, and walked out the door.

Her name was Tess. She was safe. The unexpected wave of relief made Gary giddy. The next few minutes passed in a blur as the young man, and then Luis, made their way out the door and across the parking lot. 

"Now what?" Cage asked when the door shut behind Luis. 

You're the one with the gun, Gary wanted to say. He was so damn tired of deciding. He'd gotten Tess and the others out in one piece; that should have been enough. But the bit of the paper he could see reminded him. He had to get Cage outside, but not leave with him in the car. 

Tagliotti was already calling over the megaphone. "It's safe for you to come out now, Mr. Cage. Your car is waiting."

"That dumb bi—"

Gary cut him off. "You ready to go? 'Cause I am."

Cage glanced at the door, at the reception desk, at the insurance policy in his hand, at Gary. "You're in front," he said, shoving the policy into his back pocket in a wad. "Hands up, and maybe they won't shoot. But if they do, they'll get you, not me. You make sure they can't get a clear shot until we peel away in that Porsche."

"Maybe we should go side by side."

"You should do what I say! You try anything, I will shoot you. If they try to get me, if the car doesn't start, you are dead, you got that? You're the one who said this would work."

"Yeah," Gary muttered. "Not the brightest idea I've ever had."

Cage waved him toward the window with the gun. "Look out there, but don't show yourself. We clear?" 

Gary tentatively reached for the blinds and separated a couple slats. Across the parking lot and up the street that t'd into the strip mall, he could make out cop cars, barricades, and an indistinguishable crowd. The Porsche was just a couple yards from the door. The guys with the guns, behind the cars, on the roofs, the ones who could either save his life or goad Cage into taking it, their job was to stay hidden. 

"You're getting in the car first." Cage's voice was hot and crawly in Gary's ear. "Driver's side, then slide over. I'll be right behind you."

Another car ride with another man with another gun. There was a chance Tess had told the cops about Gary, but he wasn't sure if that would help or hurt. "I can't crawl over the gearshift in a Porsche." Especially not if Cage shot him first. "Do you have any idea how small those cars are?"

"You'll figure it out."

"But—"

He jabbed the gun in Gary's side. "Who's in charge here?"

"You are. I'm just trying to make sure this works. If you're standing out there while I'm trying to crawl into that bucket seat, the only shot you're going to have is at my ass. They'll know that. They'll take you down."

"Then you'll have to get into place quick, won't you?" Cage's mouth quirked into an unsettling grin. "Like your ass depends on it." He moved close behind Gary and pressed the gun into the base of his skull, forcing him toward the door. 

"People are going to get the wrong idea about us."

"You won't care what they think if you're dead." Cage pushed the gun into his head so hard Gary was sure it would leave a bruise back there. "Let's get this over with."

* * * * *

What happened next was an immediate phone call, which Greer answered himself. He listed demands: a car, a clean getaway, and an insurance policy. Then he hung up, and they all waited. And waited.

It was only fifteen minutes by the clock, though it seemed like hours in the suffocating heat, before Greer started unspooling again.

"I gotta get out of here." He paced the entire length of the office, wiping sweat off his forehead with his t-shirt. Talking him into letting Latasha go had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now Gary wondered if he'd only increased Greer's frustration. "Out. You hear me? I can't talk to this guy, it's too hot in here. It's too hot to think. He said he'd get me what I want if I let her go, so why hasn't he?"

"Maybe they need more time." Why did Gary have a headache when he'd been shot in the arm? Maybe the wound had triggered some kind of migraine. "Why don't you call Crumb and ask him?"

"Yeah, because talking to the cops has gone so well for me. Just like letting that woman go. I'm _done_ listening to you."

Cuevas stood and asked, "Mr. Greer? If you'll let me go to my computer I'll try to put the policy request through again."

"Why didn't you do that before?" Greer's voice screeched into Gary's ears like faulty train brakes. He whipped the gun in Cuevas's direction, then coughed. "Somebody get me some water."

Franklin stood. "I'll get it. There's a cooler in the break room." 

Greer must not have noticed his eager tone, because he waved him toward the back. With the gun, of course. Couldn't do anything without the gun. The phone started ringing again. Gary reached for it automatically. He couldn't take the sound tearing at his skull anymore, and to his own surprise he wanted to hear Crumb's voice. It was a tiny bit of sanity in this chaos.

Of course Greer was there, too close, inserting himself and his gun between Gary and the phone. Gary backed off, but said, "He can't arrest you over the phone. Just tell him what you want. Or let me tell him for you. It's his job to get it. He wants to make you happy." Despite the gun and his aching shoulder, he reached around Greer, picked up the phone, and held it out to him. At least it stopped the ringing. "Talk to him, would you?"

Gary could make out the tone of Crumb's voice, but not the words. "Yeah, what?" Greer turned and pointed the gun at the window. "Do you have a car out there for me? Why the fuck not?"

"You don't want to do that!" Gary warned. This was why he'd had to stay. Letting one person go had saved that person, but not anyone else.

"And you don't want to be a god damned hero!" 

Gary put up his hands automatically; he flinched at the flare of agony across his wounded bicep. "You're right," he choked out. "I don't."

"Call me when you've got something!" Greer slammed the phone down. His aim with the gun wavered as he coughed again. "Where's the old guy with the water?"

Cuevas looked toward the back hall, a little concerned, a little longingly. "The cooler can be tricky. I'll go check on him."

"No!" Greer marched toward Cuevas. "Is there a back door?" 

"Of course there's a back door."

"Shit! He got away."

Gary backed into a desk and half-sat on it, clutching the makeshift bandage on his arm. He was still bleeding, and part of him just wanted to pass out and let the rest of them sort this through, but his panicked brain kept replaying the part of the story he'd read. Sure, Franklin and the women were safe, but maybe they would have been all along. He couldn't give up until he knew everyone else would be okay too. 

"Let him go," Cuevas told Greer. "He can't do you any good now."

Greer's finger stuttered on the trigger. "Any more cars out back?"

"Mine." Cuevas stood up from the desk and held out a sheaf of papers and a set of keys. "Take it. Take the policy. Go." He glanced over at Gary. "The two of us can head out front and distract them while you get away."

"Nope. You're coming with me. I'm not taking a chance they won't be out there waiting."

It might have been the slight shake in the ground underneath them, as if the police had brought in a tank, that shifted Gary's thoughts. But as he looked from Cuevas to Greer to the front door, where who knew how many cops and other people, friends of his, stood like targets, he realized this might be what he was meant to do all along, the reason he'd been pushed out of his own life into this one. If he could save Cuevas and everyone else, maybe even Greer, from a bloodbath, he might right whatever karmic wrong he'd committed. The other guy probably could have done it better, but at least he'd tried. What he felt in that moment wasn't elation; it wasn't even satisfaction. Just resignation.

"What if the cops are out back, too?" Greer paced toward the hallway, then spun around. "I need the distraction out front, but I need insurance if they're waiting for me. Insurance," he muttered with a bitter laugh, and put the papers Luis had given him in the back pocket of his jeans. "You." He waved the gun at Cuevas. "You're closer to my size. You're going to walk out the front door. Put this on." He struggled out of his jacket. There was a split second when he was vulnerable, and Cuevas and Gary looked at each other with the same thought: take him down. But it passed too quickly, or Gary was too addled to take advantage of it. Addled and scared, if he was being honest with himself. 

Greer handed the jacket over to Cuevas, who slipped into it reluctantly. "Maybe put your hands up when you walk out," Gary offered. Less chance of him getting shot that way.

"You think?" Cuevas's façade slipped. All three of them were slipping. The phone ringing again didn't help. 

Greer picked up and shouted, "I'm coming out!" 

He dropped the receiver but didn't hang up, so Gary heard Crumb's voice, distant as the moon. "Good choice." If Greer heard, it didn't register.

"Wait until we're at the back door," he told Cuevas. He put his hand on Gary's wounded shoulder, pressing hard. On the other side, the gun barrel shook against Gary's temple as Greer pushed him down the short back hallway, past the break room to the door that loomed at the end. Maybe the end of everything, Gary thought, if the police waiting there pushed Greer to pull the trigger. 

"Open the door. Open it!" 

Gary pushed on the bar to open the door. Somehow Greer got an arm around his neck. Gary stumbled forward into sunlight and shouts and it was too much, all of it. His knees buckled, and Greer didn't bother holding him up. Gary thought he heard one familiar voice calling, "Hobson?" before he blacked out.

* * * * * 

Gary had time to get his hands up before Cage forced him out the office door. If the police mistook him for the gunman, he wanted them to think he was surrendering. Cage kept his gun in the back of Gary's neck and shoved him forward with a hand between his shoulder blades. But it was his high-pitched yell that made Gary flinch. "Everybody back or he dies!"

The rain had stopped, and the late-afternoon sun stabbed Gary's eyes. At least it was the familiar yellowish light of summer and not the weird, otherworldly silver patch he'd seen in the insurance office. Behind the barricades on the other side of the parking lot there was a crowd of uniforms, and beyond that, across the street, he saw Chuck's SUV. He couldn't make out individual people, but he heard Tagliotti, her voice almost as screechy as Cage's over the megaphone. "Hold fire!"

Cage grabbed the back of Gary's shirt and pulled tight. "I'll kill him! Right here and now, I'll kill him if you don't let me out of here!"

"Relax, Cage," Tagliotti called. "Keys are in the Porsche. Leave the hostage and you can get away free and clear." 

The car was to the right, a few spaces down from the insurance agency's door. It was parked so that it faced out. Perfect for a getaway. "He goes with me. It's the only way he gets out of this, you hear?" Cage shoved Gary in the back; he stumbled toward the driver's door of the sapphire Porsche. At least he was going out in style, Gary thought, and then decided he didn't want something so stupid to be the last thought of his life. He had to get out of this somehow. He'd promised Tess, and somewhere in that crowd, she was probably watching.

"In, get in!" Cage was completely unglued. Which meant he wasn't thinking straight. He jabbed the gun harder into Gary's neck, forcing him against the car door. "Now!"

"I can't get the door open. You gotta back up." Gary knew he was giving Cage a clearer shot at his ass. Or his head. But what else could he do? Keeping his hold on Gary's shirt, Cage took a step back, and Gary opened the door to the Porsche.

"Get in, get in, just like we talked about, get in!" Cage's shouts weren't any louder in Gary's head than the memory of Tess's warning. Whether or not staying with Cage and getting himself shot would be a way to get home, he couldn't do that to her. 

He put one foot in the car, then wrenched himself free of Cage's hold, dove over the gear shift, and reached for the passenger door handle. By some miracle, it was unlocked. Gary pushed the door open and half-crawled, half-fell out the other side, tumbling away from Cage's scream of fury and the sound of gunfire shredding metal. He landed in a puddle and rolled into a forest of uniformed legs. Shouts and shots rained down on him, but thanks to the ringing in his ears he couldn't make out a word of the commands.

Eyes closed, he curled into a fetal position on the pavement until the shooting stopped. He breathed, just because he could, until the shouting did, too. A few more breaths, and he dared to lift his head and open his eyes.

"Thanks, guys," he said to the S.W.A.T. team who surrounded him, then threw his hands up when he realized they all had guns pointed at him. Their voices washed over him as the puddle soaked into his clothes.

"Suspect down! He's down!"

"Ambulance is on the perimeter."

"Let it through."

"Second suspect is contained."

Gary pushed himself onto his knees. "I'm not—"

"Get down! Stay down!"

He dropped flat on his stomach. Adrenaline had been pumping through his body for too long, and he could feel the wave sink back from its crest. He just wanted to close his eyes and rest. But he had to know. "The other hostages," he rasped. "Are they okay?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know what had happened to Cage.

"They're fine," Tagliotti snapped from somewhere over his head. "They had some interesting things to say about you, but I want to hear your version." One of the S.W.A.T. team hauled Gary to his feet, and by the time his vision cleared from the puddle water, she was already marching away. "Bring him downtown," she called over her shoulder.

"So which is he, a hostage or an accomplice?" asked the guy holding him.

"Neither!" Gary said.

Tagliotti stopped and turned. She looked him up and down. Her mouth quirked into a grim smile. "Don't know yet. Better cuff him, just to be sure."

* * * * *


	23. Chapter 23

_It’s easy to sigh on a high bluff_  
 _Look down and ask when you've had enough_  
 _Will you have the sense to come on up_  
 _Or will you stay closer_  
_~Sara Groves_

 

* * *

 

Gary came to in a hospital room, surround by a sea of faces and questions. 

"Who are you?"

"How did you know the hostage taker?"

"What were you doing there?"

"I thought you were staying put, Hobson!"

"Is he okay? Chuck, tell me what's going on."

He tried to answer, to say something, anything, to make the barrage stop. But his arm was on fire. His head was pounding. His mouth was desert dry, and when he opened it only a croak came out.

An unfamiliar face pushed past the suits and uniforms crowding in on him, a tiny nurse in bright blue scrubs. "Welcome back!" Her smile reminded him of the models on _The Price Is Right_ , but he was pretty sure he hadn't won anything. "Brought a whole army with you this time, huh?" She took his temperature and blood pressure, chatting as though they were alone in the room. "Usually you're on your own until we call Marissa. What happened this time?"

Wasn't it obvious? He pointed to the bandage wrapped around his arm. "I got shot!"

"We'll take care of you, don't worry." She turned to the crowd around his bed. "Do you all need to be here?"

"He's a witness to a dangerous crime," one of the cops said. "We need to ask him some questions before you dope him up."

Gary turned what he hoped were pleading eyes on the nurse. "Please, dope me up now."

"Don't be such a baby, Hobson," Crumb said. "You got grazed. No big deal."

"Grazed?" 

"The bullet scraped your arm." The nurse poked the spot with her gloved finger. A blaze of pain streaked down to his toes. How many movies had he seen with heroes who fought through their wounds, claiming, "It's just a graze?" As far as Gary was concerned, there was no "just" about it. 

He thumped his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes, hoping his part in the drama was over. He'd certainly done enough. But the nurse didn't save him. She chirruped something about coming back with a doctor and left him to the cops. Several of them started talking at once, but Crumb, who stood down by Gary's feet, held up a hand. "Come on guys, we got a wounded civilian here. One at a time."

That slowed the barrage to a trickle. Gary answered their questions as honestly as he could, given how confusing the whole thing had been. But there was one that left him stammering and made him realize what made the other guy's job, if that was what it was, so hard: "Why were you there?" 

Gary looked from the detective who'd asked the question, a white guy with a full head of red hair, to Crumb, who scowled, arms crossed over his barrel chest. Big help. "I was—uh, I was in the neighborhood," Gary finally said. At least three cops scribbled his lame excuse in tiny notebooks. "I needed insurance."

"Don't you own your own business?" asked a cop in plainclothes. 

"We're thinking of changing providers." That was Marissa, piping up from somewhere beyond the sea of suits and uniforms surrounding his bed. She couldn't save him from the dubious raised eyebrows, or from the next line of questioning.

"Why was Jason Greer there? What made him go off at that moment?"

"Didn't you guys hear him on the phone? He wanted insurance."

"Why did he lose control?"

"They didn't give him a policy."

"What time did he get there?"

"He was there when I walked in." Gary winced at the stabbing ache in his forehead, both real and remembered. Pain made time fold in on itself, and he couldn't tell if the next questions came from the detective, or from a bunch of different people at once.

"When did you walk in? What made you send the receptionist out? How did you talk him into letting one of the hostages go? Why did you let him take you out the back?" 

"I told you, I don't know! It all happened pretty fast."

"Excuse me." That was Marissa again. A white cane nudged its way between two of the detectives. 

"You'll have to wait, Miss," the main questioner said, but she elbowed her way past him. At a look from Crumb, they made space for her in the circle around Gary's bed.

"This man is in pain." Her forehead creased in what Gary was beginning to suspect was a perpetual expression of worry. "You shouldn't push him like this."

"We need answers," the plainclothes cop told her.

"Sounds to me like he's told you everything he knows." There was a moment of hesitation, while all the macho cops digested the fact that a tiny blind woman was bossing them around, and Crumb smirked at the lead questioner. Marissa reached out her hand. "Haven't you? Gary?"

She was asking something more, but he couldn't tell what. "Yeah, I have."

Her hand dropped to the railing. A flicker of disappointment crossed her face, but she set her jaw in the next instant. "You can't get the truth when he's hurting too much to think straight. He saved lives today, including the hostage taker's." Her fingers tightened around the railing, as if she was afraid they'd drag her away. "You did the right thing, Gary. Don't lose sight of that."

"Yeah? Then why'd I end up here? You keep telling me I'm supposed to do the right thing, like that's easy, but if it keeps going this way you're going to get me killed. You told me to go over there."

"I told you we were on our way."

Somewhere behind the wall of cops, Chuck cleared his throat, but Gary could only focus on one person's thinly veiled accusations at a time. "Oh, sure, that's what you said," he told Marissa, "but only because you didn't think I would go unless you goaded me into it. You _wanted_ me to go, didn't you?"

"Wait. You people knew this would happen? I thought you said you didn't know Greer." The detective turned to Crumb. "What the hell is going on here, Zeke?"

"Oh, no," Marissa whispered.

For a split second, Gary enjoyed the satisfaction of having thrown her off balance, the one tiny bit of control he could grab out of this mess. But it evaporated when she let go of the railing and stepped back, bumping into the plainclothes detective.

"What are you saying?" the detective asked as he steadied Marissa. "Did you people know this was going down before it happened? Were you the anonymous caller?"

He didn't know how to answer that, but shrugging was the wrong response. For one thing, it caused even more consternation among the police. For another, it hurt like hell. By the time he was able to draw a full breath, the detective was escorting Marissa out of the room and Crumb was barking at the rest of the cops. "Leave the guy in peace until the docs can patch him up." He bullied the rest of them to the hallway, leaving Gary alone with Chuck, who leaned against the windowsill in a corner of the room, arms crossed, glaring.

"You got something you want to ask too?" Gary finally croaked at him. 

"I ought to be asking what part of 'keep the paper secret' you don't understand, but since you're wounded or whatever, I guess I can cut you some slack." His scowl didn't ease.

"'Or whatever'? I was _shot_." 

"Yeah, and I'm pretty sure you're never going to let that die. No pun intended." Chuck shifted the newspaper from one hand to the other, as if he wasn't sure where it should go. "I mean, I'm glad you didn't die."

"Very generous of you." Gary waited for the "but" Chuck was so obviously gearing up to deliver, but it didn't come. Instead, the nurse from earlier breezed back into the room.

"Okay, Gary, are you ready for the doctor?" 

He was ready if it meant he got painkillers and a break from the constant expectation to be a hero. _Especially_ if it meant that. Behind the nurse, Chuck dropped the newspaper into a small wastebasket, making sure Gary could see him do it. Gary didn't give him the satisfaction of a response.

The nurse looked at Gary as if she, too, expected him to do or say something, then waggled a clipboard at him and said, "Marissa gave me your insurance information and medical history, same as always, but she said I should double check with you about allergies. The police didn't want to give her a break from all that questioning. What did you get yourself into this time?"

"A mess." It was the most honest answer he'd been able to give all day. "And I don't have any allergies."

"Great! Dr. Marsden will be here any minute now. She'll probably give you a couple stitches for that gash on your arm and send you home."

"I get painkillers, too, right?"

"That's up to the doctor. Somebody ought to stay with him," she added to Chuck. "Usually Marissa does, but she's surrounded by cops out in the waiting room right now."

Chuck plopped onto the edge of the bed, making the mattress bounce and Gary wince. "On it," he said, gracing the nurse with a halfhearted version of his usual obnoxious grin. "If he tries to run, I'll take him down."

* * * * *

Interrogation rooms had a unique, horrible smell. Gary had been in enough of them to know the mix of old coffee, stale food, and sweat. Unfortunately, he didn't have anyone to complain to about this particular room. Tagliotti had dumped him in it two hours ago and left him to stew in the uncomfortable odor, along with his own worries. Chief among them was what had happened to Tess.

Tagliotti had said the day before that she was dealing with robberies and shootings, not to mention the train derailment. Tess would have had a lot to choose from if all of those had shown up in her newspaper. Gary knew from experience that the paper could be sporadic about what it chose to show him; maybe it was doing the same with Tess. Or maybe she'd prioritized the articles, saving lives where she could instead of trying to stop every crime from happening. 

He hoped she knew enough not to try to tell a police detective about the paper without evidence, which as far as he knew was still back in the insurance office. On the other hand, maybe Tagliotti would turn out to be an ally, if he could convince her to believe Tess's warnings. That hope dimmed when she opened the door and stood for a moment, assessing him from the shadows with an expression harder than the cement he'd landed on. She made a weird sound, a muted, "Huh," then shut the door and approached the table. 

He rubbed his wrists, where he still felt the ghosts of the handcuffs he'd worn into the station, and gulped half the water bottle she set in front of him before they exchanged a word. Would it have killed her to bring him a sandwich or a donut or something? But one look at Tagliotti's face, her mouth a hard, thin line, bags under her eyes, and he decided against asking for food. She'd been almost as stressed as Gary all afternoon, and probably had missed Crumb as much as he had. 

"Three times in four days." She dropped a folder, a notebook, and a small recorder on the table.   
"Gotta be some kind of record for the guy who went through his first thirty-three years without making a blip on our radar." She sat down across from him and made him wait a beat before she asked, "You okay?"

He held up his hands, fists clenched. "Wrists are a little raw. My ribs hurt from being kicked again. You might remember they took a beating a couple days ago."

She didn't even blink.

"Oh, and I had a gun jabbed into me a couple times while Cage yelled in my ear about how he was going to kill me, but other than that, I'm fine, I'm great." He rubbed his neck, trying to erase the lingering sensation of cold metal pressing into his skin. "Can I go home now?"

"To your wife?"

That brought him up short. He'd totally forgotten Marcia. "You didn't call her, did you?"

Instead of gracing that with an answer, she pressed a couple buttons on the recorder and the tape started whirring. "I want to know why you were at Family Life and Health. How do you know Mark Cage?"

"Before today I didn't." Gary took another swallow of water, watching her as closely as she watched him. "Is he okay?"

"He took a bullet to the abdomen, but they got him into surgery. He'll pull through."

"He'll be pissed when he wakes up in the hospital. He doesn't have health insurance."

"So I heard." Tagliotti pulled a timeline from a thick pile of handwritten notes. "So you arrived at three thirty-five?"

"Sounds right."

"What were you doing at that office?"

"Shopping for insurance."

"Strauss and Associates doesn't offer health coverage?" 

Gary shrugged. "I was looking for a supplemental plan."

"Right." She leaned back in her chair, a pen between her forefinger and thumb. Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Witnesses said you came in from the back right about the time we showed up."

"The front door was locked. I was being resourceful."

"Right." She drawled it out longer this time. "And you decided you were the best one to interact with the hostage taker, who had a gun, because…" She circled her pen in the air, inviting his response.

"I was trying to keep him calm. That's the most important thing."

Her expression went sharp. "What did you say?"

"Isn't that what they teach you at the academy? That in a hostage situation, the most important thing is to keep the guy calm?"

"That isn't where I learned it."

Realizing whose advice he'd just repeated verbatim, Gary guessed, "Crumb taught you that. Like he taught me."

"When exactly would Detective Crumb have taught a civilian with a perfectly clean record about hostage negotiations?"

Gary gulped. Wrong time, wrong place to go down this road. "It came up in passing. Look, can you tell me what happened to the girl who was in there? Tess. Is she okay?"

Tagliotti stared him down. 

"I know, I know, you're the one asking the questions, I just need to know if she's all right." 

"The only one who ended up in the hospital was the shooter," Tagliotti finally said. "Your friends, the blind lady and the hyperactive short guy, they said they tried to stop you going in, but they couldn't talk you out of it."

"They talked to you?" He wasn't sure if that was a good thing.

"It's only thanks to them I knew you were there and didn't order the SWAT team to shoot you along with Cage." She shuffled through her papers. "Witnesses said you pretended to be the janitor." She propped her elbows on the table and stared at him, her eyes steely blue. In another life, he might have been attracted to her.

Then again, in another life, he'd gotten her demoted.

"Let's be honest here, Mr. Hobson. You weren't looking for insurance, were you." It wasn't a question.

Gary was too tired to weave another phony excuse. Why bother? She wouldn't believe him because she'd known Crumb. And Nate Hill. And maybe all that was part of why he kept ending up in her office, and why he was in this universe or dimension or whatever it was in the first place. Maybe this was one way he could help Tess. 

Maybe Tess wasn't the only one who needed his help.

"Okay, yeah, let's be honest." He put his forearms on the table and leaned toward her. "The truth is, I knew something was going to happen." For a split second, he considered telling her about the scanner, but that was why he'd known what was happening, not why he'd gone in. "I had a feeling."

Her mouth twisted; she tilted her head to one side. "A feeling," she said, deadpan. Gary matched her stare, and after a few minutes she shook her head. "That's even worse than the excuse we got from the other hostage who wasn't supposed to be there."

"Tess." Gary sat up straight. "I don't know the last name, but her first name is Tess."

Her face was unreadable. "What's the connection between you two?"

What would get Tess in the least trouble? "There's no connection. I didn't even know her name until just before he sent her out."

"Funny, I thought she was your partner in—" Tagliotti waggled her pen. "—whatever it is you think you're doing. You weren't bitten by a radioactive spider recently, were you?"

"I don't think I'm a superhero. I was trying to stop people getting killed, and so was she." Gary left out the part where the people she'd been trying to save were him and Cage. He had no idea if the article had always been about him, or if it had changed when he walked in the office. He also had no idea who was watching behind the giant mirror across from him.

"Maybe you should have left that to the police," Tagliotti said. "The situation was contained until you showed up."

"The hell it was. You should have seen Cage shoving her around." At Tagliotti's pointed glance at his hands, he unclenched his fists. "Is she still here? Is she okay?"

"She'll be fine. So you weren't working together, but you both showed up in that office out of a clear blue sky trying to stop Cage?"

If he was ever going to get her to believe him, and, more importantly, Tess, he had to be at least partly honest with her. "I went in looking for Tess. Look, Detective, this is about her, and how you need to listen to her. She tried to tell you what was going to happen beforehand, didn't she?"

"If you think I'm going to divulge police business to you, you have another think coming."

"She must have," Gary said. He'd been over this in his head, with all the time he'd had to wait. "She probably called, maybe even came in here, and she told you there was going to be a problem at that office. She would have told you someone would die, because that's what she was trying to stop. And you didn't listen until it was too late. Why'd you ignore her? Is she too young? Or is it because she had the baby with her?"

She blinked at him, probably in hopes it would make him disappear. "There's no baby in this story, Hobson."

Gary let out a little of his tension in a long breath, hoping the kid was with a sitter or a daycare, somewhere safe. The paper wouldn't go to someone who'd put her own child in danger like that. Then again, why would it go to someone who'd let Marissa get hurt?

"There's just you and a bunch of hostages and a guy with a gun," Tagliotti finished. "How did you know what was happening? Did you read some tarot cards? Look it up in a crystal ball? Phone the amazing Kreskin?"

She'd gotten those phrases from Crumb. Even the way she spoke, offering each question like a challenge, sounded like him. Gary took it as a sign. "I can't tell you how, but I knew Cage was going to lose it. More important, Tess knew."

"So you were following this young woman around trying to help her? Robin to her Batman?"

He shrugged. It wasn't that far off the mark. "You have to accept that she knows things like that every once in a while and trust her, like Crumb did with Nate Hill."

Tagliotti went very still. "Nathan Hill was a kid full of ridiculous stories. Stories that got Crumb killed." 

Gary leaned in again. "He saved a bunch of civilian lives that day at the skating rink because Crumb listened to him. I would lay money that Crumb didn't _want_ to listen to him, but he did, didn't he? And if you'd listened to Hill the day the president was nearly assassinated, if you hadn't been afraid to believe him because of what happened to Crumb, Nate would still be alive. How long after Marley shot him did you show up at the Randolph building? A minute? A few seconds? What made the difference between not believing him and saving his life? Or are you the one who killed him?"

Glaring as though she'd like to kill _him_ , Tagliotti snarled, "The feds thwarted that assassination attempt. Chicago PD was not involved, and neither were any civilians."

"Not officially, right? It's all top secret, you can't tell me about J. T. Marley and how he nearly killed the president. Did you believe him when he said he was with the Secret Service? Did you know he was involved with the Kennedy assassination?" 

She snapped off the tape recorder, but she didn't, even for a split second, look over her shoulder, which told him no one else was behind the two-way mirror. "Hobson, stop."

"Maybe you don't want to talk to me about it because you know that if you'd believed Nate a little sooner—"

"Hobson."

"—you might have saved him, too," Gary finished. "If you had believed him right away, or if he hadn't still been recovering from the bombing, or if he'd had friends who'd come to you, maybe you would have gotten to him before Marley killed him." He was reasoning it out as he talked. Tagliotti sat frozen, her expression an impenetrable wall. "But you did get there, even if it was too late for Nate, so there must have been something that made you believe, something that meant you got there in time to save the president. Nate Hill was a hero, and he died because of it, and you can't tell anybody." He felt a split-second satisfaction at the stricken look on her face, then realized he was the one who'd put it there. "Crumb's death wasn't Nate's fault, and Nate's death wasn't yours."

She pressed her hands together and drew in a deep breath. "There was a bomb in a teddy bear," she said, cold as the ice that must have been the last thing Crumb felt. "Hill shouldn't have interfered. If he _was_ too weak to stop an assassination attempt, and I'm not saying we knew about any such thing, he shouldn't have stuck his nose into a matter of national security."

He had to ease up on her or she'd never listen, to him or to Tess. "I meant what I said. It wasn't your fault Nate Hill died," he repeated. "It was bad timing all around, and that sucks, but that's the point. If you listen to Tess when she comes to you, if she ever comes to you again, maybe you can save a lot of other lives, including hers. I'm telling you, Tagliotti, if she says something's going to happen, you need to believe her."

She held his gaze. Gary could have sworn they'd somehow matched breaths. "Seems to me you're asking me to take a hell of a lot on faith."

"Crumb told me once that police work is not an exact science. Too many messy humans involved. But he trusted Nate, didn't he?" Gary saw her start to nod, then catch herself. Still, it was enough. "It seems to me that sometimes you might not have anything but faith. And I'd say it's safe to put your faith in Tess."

Tagliotti tapped her pen on the table, then between her fingers. Finally, she pushed the start buttons on the recorder and looked back up at him. One blink, and any confusion was gone from her eyes.

"You really didn't know Cage?"

He'd done what he could, at least for now, and he could feel the adrenaline finally leaving his system. If he didn't get out soon, he'd fall asleep on the table. "No, ma'am."

She snorted. "You're my age. You don't get to call me ma'am." 

She started in on another round of questions about Cage and everything that had happened. Gary answered as thoroughly as he could without mentioning the paper, Cat, or the scanner. It shouldn't have been so exhausting. Most of what he was telling her was unvarnished truth. But avoiding topics without letting Tagliotti know he was avoiding them took a lot of mental energy.

"Is anyone else from the office still here? Luis Cuevas, or Marie, or the others?" he asked when she'd taken him up through the point where she'd ordered him handcuffed. "I just want to make sure they're okay," he added at her look.

"Everyone's fine, except for Cage, but he should be out of surgery by now. You'll have to testify."

"I know." He would deal with that, if he was still here, when the time came. "Can you tell me how to find Tess? Where she lives, her last name, anything?"

"Let me get this straight." Tagliotti pinned him with a glare that was, in its way, scarier than Cage's, because there wasn't any madness in it. She wasn't going to put up with an ounce of bullshit. "You don't want to let your wife know what's going on, but you want the name and address of a pretty fellow hostage? One who's young enough to be your younger sister, at least? That could be construed as perverted, Hobson."

"It's not like that!" His voice cracked on the last word. "You know it's not."

Tagliotti sighed. "It's not like anybody involved in this thing could have motives that make sense. I mean, health insurance. How mundane is that?" She dropped her pen and held up her hands. "Okay, you're done. But make sure we can find you for the next little while. You don't have plans to leave town, do you?"

"Kinda wish I did," Gary said wistfully. He got to his feet, wincing at the ache that radiated through his ribs. "Detective Tagliotti, please. Tell me you'll believe Tess from now on."

"I'll think about it." The hard set of her mouth told him that was all he was going to get, at least for today. She followed him as far as the doorway and pointed out a path through the maze of desks. "There's a back door. I told your friends to wait for you out there. Lots of reporters out front." She looked as inscrutable as ever, but Gary nodded at her anyway.

"Thanks."

* * * * *

"You seem upset, ma'am." Detective Steptoe handed Marissa a Styrofoam cup of tea that had already gone cold.

"Of course I'm upset." Not to mention tired of people telling her she shouldn't be. "My friend put his life on the line to save people and you're treating us like suspects."

"What you said about talking to Hobson ahead of time, telling him you were on your way before he went in…" He left the sentence unfinished, a neat trick, like placing her in the dead middle of the waiting area across the hall from Gary's room. She was seated on an uncomfortable chair and surrounded by cops who smelled of varying degrees of coffee, sweat, and impatience. She could hear Spike whining faintly a few yards away; she snapped her fingers and he made his way to her side. 

After a few seconds of pointed silence while she scratched Spike behind the ears, Steptoe asked, "How did you know what Greer was planning?"

"I didn't. I don't know Mr. Greer." A ripple of shuffling feet went through the room as the circle of men around her shifted.

"But Hobson said you told him to go there and do the right thing. That means you knew Greer was going to hurt people."

She took a deep breath, praying she could make her bluff work. "As I told you before, we are trying to find a new insurance provider for our business. Gary's reluctant to make time to do that kind of thing." That much, at least, was true. "I have to push him sometimes. I thought he wouldn't show up to meet with the representative, which was why I asked Crumb to bring me there, but by then, Gary had changed his mind. He got caught up in the mess and did what he could to help."

"And who was the rep you were supposed to meet with?"

"I—I don't remember." 

"Seems like you should."

"Hey, Steve, cut her a break," Crumb jumped in. "She's all emotional and upset, like you said." The sudden, tense pressure of his hand on her shoulder told Marissa he was playing into the detective's assumptions about her. "Have you seen Hobson's file? He ends up in situations like this every other week." 

"Yeah, but _how_ , Crumb? What do you know about him?"

"More than I'd like. For one, he's saved more lives in two years than half the guys in your department." He went on, but Marissa tuned him out. The thought that the Gary he was talking about might never come back was too much to bear. 

If she'd had any doubts about which version of Gary was in that hospital room, they'd been erased by his slip-up about the paper in front of the police. Not that he didn't have the right to accuse her of goading him into action. No matter how minor his injury turned out to be, he was right: he'd tried to help, and he'd been shot for his efforts, and that had to be a shock for a guy who hadn't even known the paper existed a few days ago. 

"You want to know more, fellas?" Crumb groused when his long explanation was met with more questions. "Why don't you ask your gunman when he's out of surgery? I'm telling you we didn't know anything about this before Hobson walked in on it. My word ought to be enough."

Their grudging acknowledgement and her own stumbling agreement to call them if she remembered anything else put a blurry end to the interrogation. When the last of the loafered footsteps echoed away, she let out a sigh and slumped back in her seat. "Letting Detective Steptoe think I'm an idiot is one way to put him off the scent. Thanks, Crumb."

He eased himself into the seat next to hers. "Nobody who's been around you for five minutes would think that. I figured they'd take it easy on you if they thought you were all discombobbered. That way you don't have to tell them what you can't tell them."

She nodded, swallowing back another lump in her throat.

"We're going to get him back, sweetheart."

"He was there. At that office. I know it, I could feel—"

"Hey." Crumb cut her off. "I know what you're gonna say, and I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am way too tired to deal with Hobson's sci-fi shenanigans right now. This was a first-class shit storm, and I'm not done tap dancing for Steptoe and his crew yet."

"Understood." Just barely, but she did sympathize with the tight spot into which he'd been thrust. "Thanks for your help with this, Crumb."

He grunted. "I'm going to see what they find out from the gunman. Will you be okay here for a while?"

"Of course." 

He didn't move, though. The pause, the "but," hung in the air, something else he wasn't sure how to say. How could that be, when they'd said everything—almost everything—over the past few days?

"What is it?"

He drew in an audible breath, then nudged her elbow with his own on the joined armrests of their chairs. "Despite what you can or can't tell the cops," he said in a low tone, "you had as much to do with all this ending relatively safely for everyone involved as Hobson did. You remember that."

He left, footsteps echoing heavily down the hall. Spike put his head in her lap. Scratching him between the ears, she forced herself to take deep breaths and let them out slowly, trying to quiet the incessant memories of the chaos of the last few hours: gunfire and shouting and sirens and endless questions about who'd known what and how and why, all while she was trying to figure out what had happened to both Garys.

It wasn't long before new footsteps snapped across the hallway and came to a stop next to her chair. "Hey." At Spike's low growl, Chuck added, "Hiya, pooch." He sat down next to her. "The doc's doing a pretty thorough checkup. If you ask me, she's sweet on him. Why else wouldn't she notice me?"

"Maybe because she has a patient who's been shot and traumatized." 

"Yeah, well, he's going to be okay. You know that, right?" 

"We don't know that. We don't know anything. Who is that man? And what happened to the Gary we know? He was there. He had to have been, I could—"

"I swear to God, if you say you could feel him, I'm walking." Chuck's voice was suddenly muffled, as if he'd run a hand over his mouth, or buried his head in his hands.

"We both felt the ground shake. What if our Gary was there and go shot, too? What if he was hurt worse than this one? We need the paper. Do you have it?"

This time, his voice came through sharp and clear. "The last thing we need right now is that newspaper."

"It's our only connection to the Gary we know."

"That guy in there doesn't need to worry about that right now. None of us do, okay? You said it yourself, he's traumatized by all this. He needs a break."

She couldn't deny the truth of that, but she couldn't shake the feeling that the paper was the key to getting Gary home. "He has to learn to deal with it. It's who he is. Both of them." She sighed, wondering what was going on in Gary's room. "I just hope that doctor doesn't notice the medical record doesn't quite match him. There are some scars from the past few years this guy probably doesn't have."

"You mean like the one from where his head hit the pavement last spring? Twice? Or the broken leg from falling off the scaffolding?"

"And the one on his upper arm from when he was cut trying to push an old lady out of the path of a falling window."

"I don't remember that."

"Not to mention the time he broke his big toe when he slipped off the pier trying to help a kid on a runaway jet ski."

"So you're saying he's already met his deductible for the year," Chuck deadpanned, but there was an uneasy note in his voice. "You really know his insurance information by heart?"

"Someone has to." Having a good memory helped her be more independent. But somewhere along the line that independence had shifted. She still did everything she could for herself, but it had become easy to believe that the major, sudden things were Gary's purview, that he would always be there to let her know they were coming. Unless they happened to him. And until he'd been replaced by a less assured copy of himself. "I also know his Social Security, driver's license, and credit card numbers, not to mention what's in his living will."

"He has a living will?" Chuck squeaked.

"It doesn't cover involuntary transfers to different universes." Spike scooted back to sit on her feet. He'd never been comfortable in hospitals, probably because she wasn't. She wiggled her fingers, and his head landed in her lap again, warm and anchoring.

"Shit, Marissa. When did all this happen?" 

Chuck, of all people, should know what a big responsibility being Gary's friend could be, and who that responsibility had fallen to when he'd left. "After you went to California, he made me his emergency contact. He has a lot of emergencies, and he's not always conscious when they bring him in."

"Like you said last night, you're the one who stayed." Now his voice was completely flat.

She hesitated, but only for a moment, before she admitted, "Last night was bad for all of us. I didn't mean you were wrong to leave."

"Maybe you should have meant that." His chair creaked. "I let him down, going out to California."

"Gary would never say that."

"Yeah, well, just 'cause Gar's too nice to say it doesn't mean it isn't true."

"You have every right to follow your own dreams. But he has been kind of adrift without you. Before all this happened, he seemed overwhelmed, between the paper and the bar. It made him cranky."

"Gar? Cranky?" Chuck snorted. 

"Remember when you asked me who I'd fight with, when you left?" She couldn't help a smile at the memory.

"The two of you? Seriously?"

"It's never a knock-down drag-out. He's too conflict avoidant for that. But we dance around certain issues every few weeks, especially when it comes to the kinds of help we both need. He's too busy with the paper to do the things I need him to do at the bar, and he won't let me help with the paper because he says he needs me at the bar."

"Sounds like Gary's logic. I can't say I've missed what the paper did to any of the plans I used to try to make with him."

"I thought you were enjoying your extracurricular adventures with the paper this week."

"At first, yeah. But his whining about not wanting to do the right thing is getting old. And everything coming back to Marcia," he added, warming to the topic. "'What's Marcia going to think? Why did she leave me? Why isn't she here? Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!'"

Her laugh was weak, half-hearted. Spike gave a doggie sigh and settled back down on her feet.

"I guess it sounds kinda dumb when I put it that way. But I also think it could be true. This guy is like our Gar in some ways, but he hasn't figured out why our Gary took on the paper."

"Why do you think that is?"

"Isn't it obvious? He's the eternal crusader. As grumpy as Gar can be about rushing in to save the day, he likes doing it. Now that I've had a chance to do something I really love, I get him, at least more than I did before. The guy in there, he's like I was before I went to California. He's still trying to find his groove."

"Wow, Chuck, that's really insightful."

"Just call me Doctor Sigmund Fishman. Speaking of which, the doc just left his room. She's all moony-eyed. I'll go make sure she didn't propose, and then we can help him discover his guiding cliché, or whatever."

His chair creaked again, but she reached for his arm before he stood. "Chuck? I'm glad you're back, even for a little while."

"We'll figure this out. We'll get him home." She heard him knock on Gary's door and say he hoped he wasn't interrupting anything, then the door opened and shut and she was left alone again.

But not completely alone. Spike whined, and as she reached down to scratch behind his ears, a soft, familiar _meow_ sounded from somewhere near the television set.

"Cat?" Marissa held out her hand and in an instant he was in her lap, nuzzling and purring. Then she realized what it meant, what it had to mean. Juggling Cat and Spike's harness, she made her way into Gary's room.

"Where's the paper?" she asked without preamble. "There's something we need to fix."

* * * * *


	24. Chapter 24

_Closer to the danger and the rolling deep_   
_Closer to the run and the losing streak_   
_And what brings us to our knees_   
_Some hearts live here_   
_~Sara Groves_

 

* * *

From his perch on the edge of the bed, Gary looked past the nurse who was adjusting the bandage that wrapped around his shoulder and upper arm to Marissa. Then he looked at Chuck, who was frantically and uselessly trying to wave Marissa into silence, then back to the nurse, who looked even more peeved than Gary felt. 

"Marissa, honey," she said with an incredulous laugh, "you can bring Spike in with you, but a cat?"

"It's Gary's cat. I found him in the waiting room." She weighted "found him" as if Gary was supposed to know what that meant, and he did, or he almost did, but he didn't want to think about it too much, not when his shoulder was on fire and his brain felt like it was banging against the front of his skull.

"But how—" the nurse began.

"Cat showed up," Marissa repeated even more emphatically. "Out of the blue. It found Gary for a reason." Chuck coughed, and she turned toward him. "We need to figure out what it is."

The nurse looked to Gary, who would have shrugged if his shoulder didn't hurt so badly. "Okay, fine, but don't let anyone else see that cat." She threw her hands up as she skirted Marissa and headed out the door. "I'll get the discharge papers together. Never anything normal with you guys around, huh?"

"Don't forget my prescription," Gary called after her. They'd given him a pill for the pain, and waiting for it to kick in was agonizing. Once it started working, he didn't want the medicine to wear off for the next day or two.

"Where is it?" Marissa asked when the door closed. The cat wiggled out of her hold and hopped onto the bed behind Gary. 

"Cat equals paper equals trouble." Chuck backed up, blocking the wastebasket where he'd tossed the paper. Gary wasn't sure why; he wasn't about to go after it, and it wasn't as if Marissa could have seen it no matter where Chuck stood. "Haven't we had enough of that for one day?" 

"What if someone else is in that paper, someone who needs our help? Were there any stories to fix this evening?"

There'd been something, but it didn't feel all that important right now. Instead of answering, Gary pulled on the shirt the nurse had brought him from the lost and found. The police had taken his own bullet-grazed and bloodstained shirt for evidence. The doctor had debated putting his arm in a sling to keep him from tearing out his stitches—all four of them—but the bullet hadn't done any damage to his muscles, so she'd settled for making him promise not to lift weights for a few days. 

"Gary?" Marissa prompted.

"In case you've forgotten, I got shot today. I'm done." The only thing he wanted to do was go home. His real home would have been preferable, but right now he'd settle for the loft above McGinty's. He pushed himself off the edge of the bed and stood, ignoring the cat meowing behind him. The room went a little blurry except for Marissa, who stood before him, waiting for him to play hero again.

"You can't be done," she told him. "Cat wouldn't be so insistent if you were. Look at the paper. Please."

"I don't have it."

"Chuck?"

"It's in the wastebasket." Chuck looked from Gary to Marissa and back, as if trying to decide whose side to take. 

Marissa dropped her dog's harness and pushed past Gary and Chuck, shuffling a little until she toed the wastebasket and fished out the newspaper. She held it out in Gary's general direction. "I know you're shaken up," she said. "But I've seen you get through worse."

"That wasn't me," he reminded her.

"You just proved you can do this."

"In case you haven't noticed, in case the army of cops that just left escaped your attention, I fucked it up. I completely fucked it up."

"How can you say that? People lived because of you. I understand it's a huge responsibility and this story had a lot of fallout, but you can't let it scare you away from the rest of the people who need help."

"Oh, that's what you call getting shot? Fallout?" He was left with could-have-beens that would haunt his nightmares: bodies slumped on the floor of that office, pools of blood, three motherless kids. The same dog who sat watching him now standing guard as Marissa was loaded into an ambulance. He'd come far too close to being the cause of all that, just when he'd started to come to terms with the newspaper.

"You survived, Gary. Everyone survived, even the hostage taker. You're better at this than you realize, and we are here to help. Take it."

Gary shook his head; Chuck sighed and took the newspaper from Marissa. "She's right, you know." He turned pages while Gary sank back down on the bed. He felt a little less dizzy that way. "Like it or not, it's part of the deal. If you want the rewards—and the Sox are playing tonight—you have to earn them."

"Oh, no, Chuck," Marissa said. "You are not going to use the paper to gamble again."

"Is anyone remembering the part where I got shot and questioned by the police?" Gary asked.

"You also got called a hero by nurses and a cute doctor," Chuck said. "Don't worry. I'm sure you won't let us forget."

"I thought we'd be done after the fireworks," Gary said. "I _was_ done, except for the knife fight later. Which I am not dealing with, by the way. I don't want to get 'just grazed' again. Oh, what?" he asked at Marissa's dawning smile, a little too sly for his comfort.

"You remembered all the stories. You're doing this, whether you'll admit it or not. There is a reason for each and every one of those stories, Gary, and there's a reason the paper is showing them to you. Just like it showed you the hostage standoff."

"What was the reason for all that? You want to explain it to me? Greer got shot. I got shot. Everyone in that office is traumatized."

"And nobody died," she pointed out. Gary glanced at Chuck, who mouthed "relentless" and rolled his eyes. Still, he opened the newspaper and started scanning the stories. "Maybe the reason was to show you you're capable of handling a drastic situation like that one."

"Or that I can't, and shouldn't even try. Why should I put myself out there? Why should you, when the police are already on your case?"

"Because it's the right thing to do."

"Yeah, well, in this case the right thing and the stupid thing are not mutually exclusive," he muttered.

Marissa clucked her tongue and turned to Chuck. "What's in the paper?"

"There's that disturbance tonight at The Alibi," Chuck said, folding the newspaper open at the Metro section, "but there's a story here I don't remember from before. A guy gets electrocuted in his garage   
during band practice."

"Sounds simple enough to fix," Marissa said.

"Easy for you to say." Gary looked down and realized he'd buttoned the shirt wrong. That's what he got for trying to do it one-handed. Unbuttoning was even harder, for some reason. For the umpteenth time, he wished for Marcia. "Can't they make Velcro shirts?"

"Hold still." Marissa stepped closer and traced the edges of the button strip with her fingers, then started fixing his half-assed job.

"I can't even button my shirt, and I'm supposed to stop an electrocution and a knife fight?"

Chuck flashed him an evil grin over the top of the newspaper, waggling his eyebrows. "Says here the drummer's a girl. Maybe she's hot."

"Chuck!"

"You in?" Chuck asked, ignoring Marissa. 

"Do I have a choice?"

"Nope." Marissa's grin was traitorously cheerful.

"So we go?" Chuck asked.

Marissa finished the last button and nodded. "We go together."

* * * * *

The precinct's back stairway led to a parking lot populated mostly by squad cars. Gary splashed though an oily puddle on his way to his friends. The black SUV stood out, as did Chuck, who was leaning against it with his arms crossed, looking a lot less intimidating than Tagliotti. When he caught sight of Gary, he turned and said something into the car, and Marissa climbed out.

"Did you see her?" Gary asked when he got near enough for them to hear him without the half dozen cops in the lot hearing as well. "Did she come this way?"

"Who?" Marissa had a look of near-permanent worry etched on her face, one Gary was used to from the Marissa he knew.

"The girl with the paper. She was there trying to stop Cage. I have to find her. Did you talk to her?"

Marissa shook her head. "They wouldn't let us get anywhere near the hostages."

"And some of us were too worried about who didn't come out of that office when he released them," Chuck snapped, pushing off the car with a glare. "Like you."

"Calm down, will you?" Gary rubbed his temple. It didn't stop his head throbbing. "There are cops out here, Chuck."

"Oh, right, I should calm down. First my car nearly flips over, and now this? He had a gun to your head!"

Marissa's eyes went round. "You didn't tell me that part."

"Stuck right in the back of your neck, like he wanted to splatter your brains all over that Porsche."

"Oh, God, Gary."

"It's okay. I'm okay." Gary gave her shoulder a squeeze and turned her back toward the open door of the SUV. "Can we get out of here now, before any reporters catch up with us?" 

Even though she didn't resist Gary's guidance, there was a stillness to Marissa, a sign she was working through something. "Is it always like this?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Do your friends always have to stay behind and worry while horrible things happen to you?"

What was he supposed to say to that? It hadn't exactly been fun on his end, either. "I'm okay, I promise. And I appreciate both of you sticking around. What you told the police saved my life."

Chuck shook his head. "Don't count on it every time, buddy. Come on, we need to eat."

"What we need to do is talk to Dr. Stinton." Marissa bounced her cane against the asphalt. Gary supposed it was good to know Chuck could get on her nerves in any reality. "When we were out there with the cops we felt the ground shake."

"I told you," Chuck said, "that was trucks."

"No, it wasn't," Gary said. "I felt it, too." And he'd seen something. "There was this light. It was weird, kind of like liquid silver. I saw it back at the Gleacher Center."

"What do you think it means?" Marissa asked. 

"It could just be a coincidence, like Chuck said." Gary let the thought trail off with a shrug.

"Or it could mean that you were closer to getting home," Marissa said as Gary helped her up to her seat. "Do you want to go back?"

What he wanted was a chance to lay down somewhere dark and quiet for a few hours. Or a few months. "I need to find Tess," he said instead. She was the most important piece of the puzzle, he was sure of it.

"No, we need to eat," Chuck insisted. "You're both suffering from low blood sugar."

"I know what you think you have to do," Marissa went on, ignoring Chuck, "but don't you want to know the parameters? Stinton said going back could cause a lot of destruction. What if you get hurt? We need to ask him if there's a safe way to get you home." 

Chuck snorted. "Oh, come on, he'll probably just tell Gary to click his heels and stick his finger in a hard drive, and we all know that's not going to work. Even if it does, I think we've earned dinner first."

Gary didn't exactly disagree with him; food might help the headache he'd been nursing for hours. Still, he couldn't help asking Chuck, "Don't you want me to go home?"

"Don't answer that," Marissa said quickly.

Chuck stomped around to the driver's side. "Look, you made me chauffeur, and I'm telling you, your ride is leaving."

"You're more than a chauffeur," Gary said, settling into the passenger seat. 

"Then _listen_ to me." Chuck bounced into his seat and slammed the door shut.

"Where's the scanner?" 

Chuck wouldn't meet his eyes. "Not now. There's been enough drama for one day, okay?"

"It's more than simple drama. I found Tess, she saved my life." If he kept saying her name, maybe he could conjure her up somehow. "I need to find her again."

"What do you mean, she saved your life?" Marissa asked. 

"I was in her paper. I saw it. Cage was going to shoot me. He would have killed me if Tess hadn't warned me."

"You saw your own death?" Marissa squeaked.

"It didn't happen because she saw it first and told me about it."

"Yeah, well none of that would've happened if you hadn't crashed the party, which you wouldn't have done without that evil squawk box, so just lay off it for a while, okay?" Chuck groused. "I never did get lunch. I'm not going to miss dinner, too."

Gary realized he could kill two birds with one stone. "I know a great little diner just south of the Loop."

"No." Chuck started the car and pulled out of the lot. "You do not get to call the shots here. With my luck, you'd take us somewhere that's about to be robbed, or torched, or accidentally carpet bombed, and it would happen before I could even order. I am taking dinner into my own hands. The best pizza in Chicago at the best spot—my own damn couch." 

"Huh." Filing the idea away for a while wouldn't hurt; Tess had been working the morning shift anyway, so she probably wouldn't be at the diner until early tomorrow. Gary turned toward Marissa. "You'd think he actually cares what happens to me."

She forced a smile that wouldn't have fooled anyone and pulled a cell phone out of her bag. "For once, I think he's right. But we _are_ calling Dr. Stinton on the way to Chuck's."

* * * * *

Chuck and Marissa were right about one thing. Gary couldn't have fixed the new story on his own. He barely made it from the hospital entrance to the passenger seat of Chuck's rental car, where he rested his head against the seatback and closed his eyes. He wasn't even sure the doctor should have released him, the way his shoulder hurt, though now that he thought about it, the medicine seemed to be having an unexpected effect. The pain was still there, but he didn't care nearly as much about it, at least not until his so-called friends started in on him.

"Read me the article," Marissa said from the back seat, where she was scrunched up with her giant dog. "The whole thing, not just the headline."

"Pretty sure that's on you," Chuck said. When Gary didn't answer—it was so nice and dark behind closed eyes—he nudged his elbow. "Gar?"

"Gaaaah!" The jostle made Gary very much aware of the pain that still lingered. "What are you doing? I got shot in that arm!"

"It's just a flesh wound," Chuck told him.

"It's a wound! To my flesh! It hurts like hell."

"Sorry. I thought they gave you painkillers."

"Not enough," Gary muttered. He ground his teeth together and waited for the wave of pain to crest, then die down.

"Gary?" Marissa prompted. "If you read the article, we'll have a much better idea what to do when we get there."

"Fine." Between the movement of the car and the headache, Gary had to brace his forearms on the dashboard to steady the paper's bouncing words. "It says there's an altercation."

"That's newspaper speak for a knock-down-drag-out," Chuck said. "Ali vs. Frasier, thirteen rounds, a free-for-all."

"Chuck, please." Marissa sounded more defeated than annoyed.

"An altercation between members of a band, college kids practicing in one of their parents' garage. And while they're fighting, one of them rolls into some of the equipment or a sound board or an amphitheater? That can't be right." Gary squinted harder. "Amplifier. And there's something about exposed wires and a spilled drink and—"

"Blammo!" Chuck finished. "Electrocution!"

"Yeah," Gary sighed over Marissa's protest. "Blammo. Darrell Rivers, twenty-two, DOA. Then a fire starts, and Carrie Jordan, twenty-one, sustains non-life-threatening injuries. Third band member unhurt." He let the paper drop as he tilted his head back and closed his eyes again. "So what are we supposed to do?"

"Stop them from fighting in the first place," Marissa said, so matter-of-factly that it set Gary's teeth on edge, even though he knew now that her practicality was meant to relieve him of some of the dread currently churning up his stomach. 

"Separate them to their corners," Chuck chimed in. "Make them take a break, let them gargle some water and spit it out, readjust their gloves and mouthpieces."

"You done?" Gary muttered.

"Just getting started. I watched all the _Rocky_ movies, One through Five, a couple weeks ago."

"You should have taken a class in conflict resolution instead," Marissa said.

"Oh, right, because I knew I was going to be here, doing this. I gotta work with what I got, and what I got is an extensive knowledge of Sylvester Stallone movies and training montages."

They pulled up to the curb in front of the house, a modest bungalow in Rogers Park. An insistent bass beat sounded from somewhere beyond the house, forcing the pounding in Gary's head to keep time with it. 

"I'm surprised it isn't someone from the neighborhood arguing with them that starts the fight. That isn't even real music," Gary pointed out when Chuck rolled down his window and they could hear voices shouting—no, rapping—along with the beat. "What?" he asked when Marissa snorted, just behind his shoulder.

"That's what white people said about jazz and the blues the first time they heard them," she said.

"What, you like this stuff?" Chuck asked incredulously. He killed the engine.

"They're kids. They're expressing themselves, and there's nothing wrong with that."

"Yeah, well, they're about to express themselves right into a hospital," Gary pointed out through clenched teeth. "Or jail."

"Garage must be around back," Chuck said, nodding at the house, which didn't have a front driveway. "Should we pull around to the alley or walk back there?"

"Whatever." Gary was completely past caring.

"Gary, I know you're hurting. But these are kids and they need help." Marissa worked the door handle; the rattle sent stabs of pain through Gary's head, as did her strained voice. "Are the child safety locks on?" 

"Beats me. It's a rental," Chuck said. 

"One of you has to open this door for me."

Gary sighed and got out, then opened her door. Her dog looked at him balefully. "Do you guys even need me to do this? I have no idea what to say to these kids, any more than I knew what to say to Greer."

"Don't worry, I've got it covered," Chuck said as he rounded the car. "As long as they're familiar with _Rocky_ , we're good."

Gary groaned.

"You figured it out with Greer," Marissa said, "or there would be a lot more people dead right now."

"He shot me!" Though he had to admit the pain had finally faded to a dull throb. "Why do you keep forgetting that?"

"Like you'd let us forget?" Chuck snapped.

"Let's focus on the problem at hand." Marissa started off in entirely the wrong direction. Chuck waggled his eyebrows at Gary.

"What?"

Chuck sighed, caught up with Marissa, and tugged her elbow toward the walkway that led to the back of the house. "Gar. Gary. C'mon," he called. 

Gary blinked away from the seedling he'd been studying. "Who plants an apple tree in their front yard in the middle of Chicago? And why is this grass so green? It's like emeralds or something."

"Oh, boy." Chuck pulled Marissa to a stop.

"It's the painkillers. They're making him loopy and distracted. It means they're doing their job." Marissa said something else, something about Gary being someone else, but he was captivated by the way the hem of her orange skirt moved in the slight breeze.

"How do you make it do that?" Gary asked her.

"What?"

"That's right, you can't see it, sorry. Oh, sorry. For saying sorry." For some reason, that made him laugh. Marissa shook her head, and she and Chuck kept moving toward the sound.

The garage was separate from the house, a snug white wooden structure with green trim that opened to an alley behind the house. "They should paint it red," Gary said. "Not red-red like a flower, but brick red. So it matches the house. And stands out against the grass."

"Yeah, 'cause curb appeal's the most important thing," Chuck said. He tried to haul the garage door up, but it was locked. "Damn."

"I think there's another door open somewhere," Marissa said, raising her voice over the music. She turned and pointed. "Maybe there?"

Gary could see the open door on the left side of the garage, but he didn't want to get any closer. Didn't want the music to get any louder. It was already driving the beat of his heart, distracting him from the colors.

"Get in there and talk to them," Chuck said, just as the music cut off. It was replaced by angry voices drifting through the door.

"This is why we haven't had a gig in two months!"

"Because you don't know basic chord progressions?"

"I was playing the right chords!"

"Not for 'Rage of the Mutants' you weren't!"

"We aren't playing 'Rage of the Mutants.' We're playing 'Cement in My Soul.'"

"Since when does that come third in the set?"

"Since last week! See what I mean, Gabe? If we're not getting gigs it's because our drummer is a girl—"

"It has nothing to do with me being a girl!"

"You never let me finish. It's because our drummer is a girl _who loses her shit_ every time I change up the set!"

"If you'd tell me when you change things I wouldn't have to call you on your bullshit!"

"So much for stopping the argument before it starts," Chuck said.

There was one way to stop the wall of pulsating crap they called music from attacking again. Gary started through the open door, Chuck and Marissa in tow. "Hey, you two," he started, because it seemed like something an authority figure—namely, his dad—would have said. "What's the fight about?"

In the gloom of the half-finished garage, three startled faces turned toward Gary and his friends. Gary folded his arms, figuring that would make him look more intimidating.

"I was merely pointing out that this band is a partnership, not a fascist dictatorship," the drummer said. Her hair was pulled back in thin braids and she wore a t-shirt with some kind of map on it. 

The guy closest to the microphone stand whirled on her. The neck of his guitar hit the stand and it wobbled precariously. "Somebody has to make the tough calls! If you had your way we'd still be in that Potbelly's downtown, playing Johnny Cash covers for the tourists."

The drummer jumped up, circling to the front of her kit. "Johnny Cash was a certified genius!"

"Just because you can't keep up with me once I start laying down my raps, that doesn't mean we have to resort to country!"

"Enough already!" Chuck interjected—or tried to. The two kids went on verbally sparring, closing in on each other. 

Gary could see, with a glance around the garage, how even a mild wrestling session might end in bodily harm. At least maybe they'd get the good drugs, though. If he closed his eyes, he could float away, above all this and into a daydream where he was walking along the lake with Marcia…

A sharp elbow jabbed into his side. "Do something," Marissa whispered.

Gary's eyes flew open. His gaze landed on the kid sitting out the argument, a bassist with a round face. He gave Gary a baleful look from his perch on a stool. "Every rehearsal, man."

There was more shouting between the other two, Darrell and Carrie. Why were their names sticking with Gary when nothing else, including what he was supposed to be doing here, would? He took a step toward the kids. "Look, Carrie, maybe we all need to calm down here."

She flashed him a glare. "Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?"

"I think I'm supposed to be Superman, actually," Gary confessed. Marissa turned a confused look on him. "Isn't that what you said?"

"No, I never—" She bit back the rest of it and told Carrie, "We were walking past and heard you arguing, that's all."

Carrie pointed her drumsticks at Darrell. "I'm not backing down. I have had it with his misogynistic bullshit!"

"I've had it with you wanting to manage this band as if you're a founding member!" Darrell snapped. 

"You guys would be nothing without me." Carrie turned to the bassist. "Sorry, Gabe, but it's true." Gabe shrugged.

Carrie and Darrell kept trading insults, shouting into each other's faces as they moved around the tiny, cord-strewn space. "Just like boxers circling the ring," Chuck told Gary. 

"Yeah, well, we have to stop them." He looked over at the door, where Marissa's dog had tugged her. At least one of them had a sense of self-preservation. He scanned the room and found a mess of cords plugged into a single electric strip tucked into the narrow space behind the drums. "Chuck, you're small. Get down there and pull the plug."

"Which one?"

"All of them."

To Gary's astonishment, Chuck dropped down and started army crawling toward the strip. Carrie, who was marching back to her drum set, narrowly missed stepping on him, but she did miss, and Chuck was in arm's reach of the plug. Gary felt a surge of satisfaction. Maybe he'd stopped the fight and the electrocution.

"I'm the founder," Darrell insisted. "The whole band was my idea, mine and Gabe's."

Carrie whirled on him. "It was a lousy idea until you got rid of Tyler and brought me in."

"Brought you in? You wore me down, begging every day to audition. And I didn't get rid of Tyler. He quit because he wanted to audition for the musical."

"He quit because he couldn't take your lousy rapping!"

Maybe they hadn't stopped a thing, Gary thought as Carrie spun around and launched herself at Darrell, kicking over her cymbal hat in the process. It landed on Chuck. 

Gary lunged to help Chuck, but Darrell shoved into him as he lifted the mic stand and yelled something about Pete Best. Gary was forced the other way, toward Gabe, who fell, along with his stool, on top of Gary. Luckily, he landed on his knees and not his shoulder.

"Enough! Stop right now!" Marissa's voice rang clear as a bell through the cacophony, its only accompaniment a soft reverberation from the cymbal that had crashed into Chuck. "Someone's going to get hurt."

"Hope it's Darrell," Carrie groused as the rest of them struggled to their feet.

"You don't want that," Marissa said. "You like him too much. And he likes you."

"Darrell?" Carrie snorted. "Not likely."

"Uh, guys?" Chuck said.

"What?" Darrell asked incredulously. "I don't like her, and she sure as hell doesn't like me!"

"It's not as if you make it easy to enjoy your company, Mr. I Run This Band with My Iron Fist!"

"Guys!" Chuck said sharply, waving his arms. "We got a bigger problem."

"Bigger than Darrell?" Carrie snorted. "I don't think that's possible."

" _You_ are the problem!" Darrell said.

"You both are the problem!" Gabe interjected. "If you would just make out and get it over with—"

"The fire is the problem!" Chuck thrust his arm at the wall, where the strip that everything was plugged into was illuminated by flickering orange flames, sparking gold. 

They were kind of intriguing, Gary thought. Showers of gold sparks that flowed from the strip like fireworks. Indoor fireworks. Why hadn't anyone ever thought of that? The concept could make millions.

"Gar!" Chuck's frantic call brought Gary back to himself, and he shook his head. 

"We gotta put this out." Gary grabbed Darrell, who was being dragged out of the garage by Carrie. "You got a fire extinguisher?"

"It's not my place." Darrell ducked out of Carrie's grasp, ran to the dark corner and picked something up, and then let her push him to the door. "Shit, Gabe, your dad's gonna kill us."

Wide-eyed, Gabe thrust a DePaul hoodie at Gary. "Thanks. Clear out," Gary told him, and stumbled over to the fire. It took hardly any time at all to smother the flames with the sweatshirt. "Go Blue Demons," he muttered between coughs.

When he went outside, Darrell was handing Carrie her drumsticks. "This is why you went back in?" she gasped.

"I know they mean a lot to you. It's no big deal."

"Sheena E. gave me these, so yeah. It's huge. If they'd burned in the fire I don't know what I would have done!"

"There's not a fire anymore," Gary told them. He'd done it. They'd survived. He'd done it even though he'd been shot. 

He'd been shot.

He dropped down to the ground, to the green, green grass, one hand on the arm he couldn't feel anymore.

"Do not make me guess."

Gary blinked up into the sunlight. Marissa stood over him, hands on her hips. But her lip trembled. She bit down on it. For all she seemed to get around okay, now that he saw her out of her element, he realized how much it would suck to have to rely on everyone else to tell her so much of what was going on. She must spend a good chunk of time feeling at least as confused as he had the past few days.

"Sorry." He ignored her frown at that; this time he didn't feel like laughing. "Everyone's okay. You were right; those two are going at it like some kind of animals." He squinted through the bright, bright sunlight, wishing he could be kissing Marcia like that. "Not sure which animals, though. Why do we say that? Do animals make out?"

"I get the picture. What about you, are you okay?"

"Yeah." He looked down at his hand, which tickled with a new sensation. Little black spots. No, bumps. Ants. Two crawled over his hand while their buddies circled a tiny hole in the ground. "Me and the ants, we're good. I wish you could see this. They're so busy. They don't even know what could have happened. I could squish them. Not that I will, but it would be so easy, and they're just scrambling along, unaware that disaster's just over their heads."

"Gary?" Her dog pushed his nose against Gary's hand. 

"Nice puppy."

"Don't worry about me, guys, I'm just fine." Chuck flopped on the grass next to Gary. "Got a little cut here when that cymbal sliced into my arm, but it's already stopped bleeding."

"Awesome." Gary brushed the ants off his hand.

"How did you guys know about us?" 

Gary looked up to see Gabe standing over him, looming like a roundish vulture.

"We're fans. Groupies, even." Chuck sat up and tossed his car keys into the air and caught them. "Kinda like the Deadheads, except you're not dead. For which you ought to be grateful."

"You guys are fans of Perpetual Impermanence?" Darrell broke off kissing Carrie long enough to give them a good look and snort, "Yeah, right." 

"Okay, then we're vacuum salesmen. And encyclopedias." Chuck rested his head on his knees, as if he were the exhausted one. "We vacuum up encyclopedias, that's how great our vacuum cleaners are."

"Darrell!" Carrie swatted his chest. "Don't give them a hard time. They brought us together."

"And saved your butts from the fire," Chuck added.

"Oh, God," Gabe groaned. "My dad's going to kill me."

"Who we are doesn't matter," Marissa said. "What matters is, we stopped you all from making a mistake."

"But why?" Darrell wanted to know.

"Like Chuck said, we're groupies," Gary said. There was something like a rhythm building, as if they were getting used to working together, the three of them. It was weird. Good, but weird. Like the cat, which came from who-knew-where to nudge his arm. "We like your band."

"Where did you see us play? It was at Potbelly's, wasn't it?"

"Darrell," Gary interrupted before he could ask any more questions. He swatted half-heartedly at the cat, which sat back on its haunches and fixed him with a stare. "We own a bar. There's a kind of network among owners, right, guys? We could find you a gig to play. Chuck knows a lot of guys who do bookings."

"Correction," Chuck said under his breath, "I know bookies."

"And he's from Hollywood," Marissa added. "Chuck, you can find a gig for Perpetual Impermanence, can't you?"

"I—I don't—" Fumbling, Chuck looked to Gary, who shrugged, but Marissa gave his leg a kick. "Okay, sure. Glad to do it. My cousin Chad has a bat mitzvah next month."

"I was thinking more along the lines of Hard Rock Cafe or House of Blues," Darrel said, looking crestfallen.

Gary picked up the newspaper that had fallen out of Chuck's back pocket and landed open at the Metro section, which held the last thing he was expected to do. "Battle of the Bands. There's one at The Alibi tonight. You guys should give it a try."

Darrell snort-coughed in disbelief, masking the cat's satisfied mews. "That club's booked months in advance. You have to be in with the owner to even get near the stage."

"Like I said, I—we—own a bar. I heard some people talking about, you know, about The Alibi. They said some of the usuals there are having a kind of a feud, and they might be looking for a last-minute replacement. You know, if you want to give it a shot instead of dying. Chuck here can call them and check. Right, Chuck?"

"Suurrrre." Chuck looked at Gary for a long minute, but he got on his phone and made a call. "Hi, I'm the manager for Perpendicular Impatience—"

"Perpetual Impermanence!" Gabe corrected.

"Uh, yeah, local band, really great, up and coming. I heard you need a last minute fill-in tonight for your Battle of the Bands."

Gary tried to ignore the satisfied smirk on Marissa's face as Chuck sealed the deal. 

"Okay, yeah, thanks." Chuck snapped his phone shut. "You're in. You go on at eleven. Not the choicest slot, but you'll be doing them a favor whether they know it or not. That gives you a few hours to get ready. Now, Darrell, hop to it!" he added, snapping his fingers, when Darrell stared at him.

Carrie grabbed Darrell's arm. "We have to make up the set list!"

"Maybe you should leave that up to Gabe," Gary said. 

"C'mon, guys." Gabe herded them toward the garage, calling thanks over his shoulder.

"Good luck." Marissa picked up Spike's harness. 

"That was great," Gary said once they were in the car and headed out of the neighborhood. The cat, who'd trotted to the car with them, curled up at his feet on the floor of the passenger side. "I couldn't have done what you did. Either one of you. That other guy, does he do all this alone?"

"Too often," Marissa said. Chuck flashed her a look over his shoulder, one Gary couldn't quite read. For once he kind of wished he could. "What does the newspaper say now?"

He flipped through it. The print was still a little hazy, but at least it held still when he stopped to read the Metro section. "Hey, guys, the story about the electrocution and fire's gone, but—"

"Teamwork strikes again." Chuck held up his hand for a high five. Gary reciprocated automatically, then winced when the impact made his shoulder throb.

"I'd like to know the 'but,'" Marissa said, "I mean, assuming it's not Chuck."

"What do you—hey!" Chuck protested while Gary snorted.

"The 'but' is, the fire story's gone, but so is the one about the fight at The Alibi," Gary told them. 

"You sure?" They stopped for a light, and Chuck took the paper out of his hands. "How the hell did that happen?"

"Because those kids are going to Battle of the Bands," Marissa said, as if it were self-evident. "Well done, Gary."

"Me? I was worse than useless in there. You talked them out of the fight long enough for Chuck to get our attention, and Chuck, you—did you start the fire?"

"You're the one who told me to pull the plug so Darrell wouldn't get electrocuted."

"But if you hadn't tried to do that, there wouldn't have been a fire." Gary scratched the back of his neck, trying to dislodge the creepy feeling that somehow they were all right. The light turned green, and Chuck tossed the paper back at Gary.

"Whatever happened in the garage," Marissa said, "you had the idea for them to play the club, and that seems to have stopped the knife fight. Don't discount your role in this."

"Yeah, you got us a two for one deal." Chuck slapped him on the back, sending more shock waves through his only slightly cushioned system. "Way to go, buddy. You should do this more often."

"Do what?"

"Follow your creative impulses. You used to have those, once upon a time. Some of us still do."

"Gary follows his by using the paper to help people," Marissa said.

"Your guy does." He laid his aching head back against the seat. "I'm not him. Which one of us are you really talking about?" There was a moment of silence that Gary, eyes closed, couldn't read. Didn't want to.

"Maybe you will," Marissa finally said, quietly and tentatively. "When you go back."

He managed one glance at Chuck, who was side-eyeing him far too seriously. But the moment was broken by a meow down at his feet. The cat jumped up into his lap, purring. "Do you guys think the cat made the last story go away?"

"That was all you," Marissa said.

"But it just popped into my head out of nowhere when he showed up. What is this cat, anyway, some kind of psychic sidekick?"

"It's possible," Chuck said.

Gary gave the cat a tentative rub between its ears. "Nice kitty."

* * * * *


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long between updates! Life, the universe, everything...but I'm on track for a few days now, at least.

_Let's be honest now_   
_For a couple minutes_   
_Even though we're in Chicago_   
_~Carl Sandburg_

 

* * *

 

Maybe it was because of the day he'd just been through, but being in Chuck's apartment rubbed Gary the wrong way. It wasn't the decor or the fact Chuck turned on the television the moment they arrived. He was used to both those things. It was in the air, as if the place wanted to suck him in and keep him from doing all the things he needed to do. Things like figure out how the paper worked here. Things like find Tess and help her. Things like find a way to take the responsibility off her shoulders. 

Maybe it was Marissa, who'd called Dr. Stinton on the way to Chuck's place and was still talking to him when they arrived, concentrating so fiercely she'd let Gary steer her through the garage, onto the elevator, and into Chuck's apartment without once noticing what was going on around her. 

Or maybe it was Chuck himself, who refused to tell Gary where he'd put the police scanner. The Chuck he knew, the one who'd known about the paper for as long as Gary had, had never been quite this reluctant to let Gary do the right thing. He never would have hidden the scanner; never would have put dinner over figuring out their next step. Maybe when the paper had first come, but after a month or so the Chuck he knew had usually gone along with whatever Gary asked him to do, after a bit of grumbling. This guy had declared that the aftermath of a hostage situation required the Manly Meat Special from Angelo's and stopped listening to Gary's protests entirely. Gary had a feeling this Chuck wasn't so much hungry as he was resisting. 

Of course, this Chuck hadn't been hanging around Gary for at least a year. Had Gary changed the Chuck he knew all that much? 

Whatever the reason, this Chuck ordered pizza and launched himself onto the couch to channel surf, leaving Gary and Marissa at the kitchen island that served as both counter and table. She hadn't been saying much, just "mmm-mm"ing at whatever Stinton was saying, but now she nudged his elbow and held her phone out, cradled in her hand. "I have you on speaker, Dr. Stinton. Can you tell Gary what you just told me?" 

Stinton's nasal voice, made even tinnier by the phone, launched into an explanation that had more math in it than a tax form. Something about how two identical particles couldn't be in the same place in the same time and the universe—the multiverse, Stinton called it—would correct for any violation of this law of nature. "It's like Einstein's twin paradox, which states you can't travel back in time to revisit yourself," he said. "I'm speaking completely theoretically here, because none of this is possible with our current technology, but if you really did slip through from a parallel universe there would have to be some kind of correction. The multiverse would try to send you back to where you came from and there would be consequences if it couldn't do it. Maybe even if it could. A tear big enough to let you travel between membranes would definitely leave scar tissue, for lack of a better term, in both universes."

"Consequences like earthquakes?" Marissa asked.

"I suppose it's possible. An earthquake is a release of energy."

"It happened today," Gary put in. He told Stinton about the shaking and the weird light. "I saw something similar when I came through. Does that mean the other guy is in the same place as me? Does it mean those membranes you talked about are close? Close enough that I could get home?"

Stinton was quiet for a moment. "There's a theory," he finally said. "It's not one I've ever ascribed to, because, as I said, for the layers of the multiverse to connect and interchange particles would require an incredible discharge of energy. But if the membranes of the two universes that had exchanged particles—"

"Or people?" Gary asked.

Another hesitation. "Or people. Theoretically. If those membranes were trying to find a way to correct the exchange, and if they were close to each other—not connected, but close—some physicists believe there would be a certain amount of what they call bleedthrough. Like reaching out to like, spilling energy from one layer of the multiverse into its nearest partner. The closer you would get to your doppelganger, the more bleedthrough there would be."

"So the earthquakes would get worse?"

"If there's going to be scar tissue, there first has to be a wound. You may be better off avoiding any places you used to frequent in your former life."

"That doesn't sound good," Marissa said. "If it's already causing earthquakes, what happens when both Garys are right on top of each other? Or if they actually do switch back?"

Stinton made a throaty noise that Gary figured was the guy swallowing back another round of, "That's not possible." 

"What if?" Gary prompted.

"On a practical level, I suppose it could be very dire indeed. Remember, the energy involved in transposing even atoms is astronomical. Transposing a person could cause anything from minor structural damage to the destruction of reality as we know it."

Marissa's eyes had gone very wide; Gary looked down at the phone and realized it was shaking. "Thank you," he said, and steadied her wrist with his hand. "We'll let you know if we need any more information."

"Mr. Hobson, I feel I should reiterate this isn't possible. If you're convinced this is happening to you, perhaps you should consult with a psychiatrist, or even a—"

"Thanks, yeah, I'll do that." Gary snapped Marissa's phone shut. "Why does everyone think I need a shrink?"

"He doesn't know about the paper." Marissa spoke deliberately, as though she were trying to get her voice and her thoughts under control. "There's a greater hand than ours making this possible."

"Why isn't that hand making sure no one gets hurt in all this? Or that I don't get a blistering headache every time I seem to get close to crossing back over?"

The doorbell buzzed, and Chuck popped up and leapt over the top of his couch to answer it. "Maybe you're getting headaches because you never eat." 

Gary fished plates out of the cupboards while Chuck opened the pizza box to reveal a rather glorious mess. And smell. "There's nothing to worry about," Gary said, to try to get the frown off Marissa's face. "The paper will keep us safe."

"The end of reality as we know it seems like a little more than nothing, my friend," Chuck scoffed.

"Oh, so you were listening to Stinton over the dulcet tones of Judge Judy?" Gary asked.

Chuck raised an eyebrow. "I heard plenty. I heard that there's a hole in the universe. A hole made by you."

"I didn't ask for this!"

"Oh, like you didn't ask for that paper, but now you can't let it go?"

"Marissa, tell him he's wrong."

"I'm not sure I can."

"This hole you made is a problem, so the universe is looking for you, trying to get you back." Chuck slid a piece of pizza onto a plate and handed it to Gary. "It's trying to suck you in and maybe send you home. That right?"

Gary looked at the pizza, wondering if Chuck had any clean forks and how much energy he'd have to expend to find one. He found a couple in the dish drainer and handed one to Marissa, who used it to scrape half the meat off her slice.

"What it boils down to is this." Chuck picked up two more slices of pizza and held them facing each other, pointed ends drooping out of his hands, a few inches apart. "Whatever you did when you crossed over to us, it smashed both realities together like this." He smacked the slices together. "You try to force them back apart?" He pulled one of the slices away. Cheese strung out and half the toppings dropped back into the box. "You're gonna lose a few pepperoni. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to be the stuff that falls out." He popped a pepperoni into his mouth. Gary stared at him, temporarily at a loss for words.

"What's he doing?" Marissa asked.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Probably not."

"If anyone is trying to maneuver both Garys to the same place so they can switch back with minimal damage," Chuck went on around a mouthful of ruined pizza, "they're doing a shitty job of it."

"Dr. Stinton said if this really did start with Gary, getting them both back to their proper places with minimal damage would allow the two realities to separate and stop the bleedthrough," Marissa said. 

Chuck crammed more pizza in his mouth, staring at Gary. 

"What?"

"This kind of stuff happen to you a lot?"

"Sort of."

"No wonder alternate-universe me took off for Hollywood. Where else would anyone believe the stories he must be able to tell?"

Marissa went on as if she hadn't been interrupted and ignored. "Minimizing damage still puts you at the center point, along with the Gary Hobson who belongs here. I don't want you to end up as collateral damage."

"Scar tissue," Chuck muttered, snagging another fallen piece of pepperoni and holding it up for inspection before he stuck it in his mouth. 

"Promise me you won't jump into any cracks in the sidewalk or patches of light you stumble across," Marissa went on. "It might fix things for everyone else, but what about you?"

"Scar tissue means something's healed," Gary said. 

"And something's died," Chuck put in. "You know, the skin that was there originally." 

"We get it," Marissa said, in a tone that warned him not to continue. Not that Chuck noticed. 

"I dated a doctor once, you know. Usually the scar tissue forms at the point of a wound. Which—" He pointed at Gary with a curve of pizza crust. "—would be you." He washed down his pizza with a swig of his beer. "But hell, that guy doesn't believe you. Why should you believe him?"

"He isn't dismissing us out of hand," Marissa said. "But he can't predict what will happen next if he can't fit this into his mathematical models. And he can't tell us what we need to know the most: why it happened in the first place."  
Gary nodded. "I'm supposed to do something here. If I figure out what that is and do it, I can get home."  
"And if you don't?"  
"It sounds as if the multiverse will heal itself eventually, no matter what you do. It's that or the end of reality," Chuck said. At Gary's frown, he added, "In other words, Gar, you'll end up a piece of pepperoni on the wrong slice of pizza. Or you'll be scar tissue."  
Gary gulped. "Maybe you guys should stay away from me. I don't want what's going to happen to me to hurt you."   
Marissa's fork clanked on her plate. "We aren't leaving you alone in this."  
"Yeah, you're irresistible, buddy," Chuck said with an eyeroll. He dropped his dishes in the sink, grabbed Gary's untouched beer off the counter, and flopped on the couch, turning the television to the Stanley Cup finals.  
"You want another slice?" Gary asked Marissa. 

She shook her head. "I should be hungry, I suppose, but today's been unsettling." She blew out a sigh. "Is your life always this—" She circled a hand, searching for the right word. "Hectic?"

"Insane," Chuck supplied without taking his eyes off the television.

"Not always," Gary admitted. Images of the worst moments flashed through his consciousness. "I couldn't take many days like today. That girl Tess, she's just a kid, and she _has_ a kid, and Cage pushed her around like she was his punching bag." He ran both hands through his hair, then stopped, letting his elbows hit the counter.

"Gary?" Marissa asked after a moment.

He didn't look up. "Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. It's just, she's in over her head. Tess. I want to help her, but I don't know how. I don't have much to offer her, other than to take over the paper for her. Maybe that's what I'm supposed to do, but how am I supposed to know? I don't have the paper to tell me what to do. I don't even have the cat." Looking up, he found Chuck staring at him. Gary shot him a questioning look, and Chuck rolled his eyes. "I have to get to her. I think I know where she'll be tomorrow morning. I just hope that's not too late. She's in trouble every minute she's on her own with that paper."

"She'll live through the night," Chuck said. "You said your paper takes care of you, so why wouldn't it take care of her? Eat your pizza."

"I'm not hungry." Not anymore he wasn't. The mess left in the box wasn't nearly as bad as the mess of this day had been. It was his fault. He must have screwed up the hostage situation or the interview with Tagliotti. Probably both. If he'd fixed things for Tess, the paper should have sent him home.

"Would you stop doing that?" Gary asked as Chuck cycled obsessively though the offerings on his cable package. "I've already got a headache, and you're not helping."

"I'm trying to find something to watch." He ran through a series of baseball games so quickly Gary couldn't tell who was playing, let alone the scores. 

"Maybe you should get some rest," Marissa said.

"Maybe." But he didn't want to try to sleep in this apartment when it felt just off enough to be wrong, when he couldn't figure out what the best thing was for him or for Tess or the paper or any of his friends with this pounding headache and the echoes of Cage's shouts ringing through his brain. He rubbed his face. He really needed some fresh air. "Come on, I'll walk you home."

"That's a long walk." But she'd lit up a little, like she was relieved at the offer.

"She can take a cab," Chuck said. 

"You're not going to jump in here? Offer to drive her home?" Gary asked. 

"Do you know how many miles I put on my car today? I have a lease, and I'm probably already over mileage for the entire three years thanks to you. Besides, you're the one with the Beemer."

"It's not mine, and it's in the garage downtown." He waited, but Chuck wouldn't even turn his head away from the television so Gary could guilt him into it via eye contact. Maybe it was better this way. They all needed a break. But he had to know Marissa was safe. He stood and gave her shoulder a pat. "How about I bus you home?"

"I'd like that."

"Yeah, well, if the bus starts shaking, Marissa, get off. Get away from this guy as fast as you can," Chuck called as they left.

Once Gary told her what part of town they were in, Marissa figured out the bus route home, complete with transfers. The first bus picked them up two blocks from Chuck's place and they settled into a seat toward the back, away from the handful of commuters struggling home after work.

"I don't know what got into Chuck tonight," Gary said. "He's usually not so rude. At least not to you. He should have offered you a ride."

"This is fine. From what I've experienced of Chuck at work, his big mouth covers up a fairly soft heart." After a moment, she added, "Maybe the Chuck you know is different because of you. Because he watched you take so much action in the world and got inspired. They are two different people, though, aren't they? Just like I'm not her."

"You're yourself." Gary elicited a faint smile from her with a nudge of his elbow. "And for what it's worth, I like who you are. Chuck's having a harder time accepting all this, I guess. I thought he didn't like the version of me that belongs here, but maybe he misses the guy."

"They were good friends once upon a time," Marissa said.

"I thought maybe that's why I'm supposed to be here, you know? To help make him better. Not change him, exactly, but to help him see a better way."

"Bring out his inner decency?"

"Something like that."

"He was really worried about you today. We both were," she said, with a note of hesitation that reminded him this wasn't the same Marissa to whom he usually unloaded everything. "I think tonight he's a little worn out from caring. It's must be new to him."

"Thanks," Gary said, and when she looked befuddled, he added, "for giving me a reason not to be so angry at him. I know he's not your favorite person on a good day." He thought back to when the Marissa he knew had made three failed attempts to register for college classes, and how Chuck, of all people, had pushed her over that speed bump. "But you two might get to be friends if you give each other a chance."

She tilted her head, considering. "I've found a lot of new possibilities to think about in that department, the past few days. Not that I think you're here to find friends for me, but you seem to have a connecting effect on people."

"I'm not sure you'll be thanking me after you've known Chuck for more than a few days, but I guess anything's possible." He gave her shoulder another friendly nudge, then watched the city roll by, the lights and shadows of towers. Without the paper, he felt disconnected from it.

"Tomorrow, when you go to that girl's diner, I want to come with you," Marissa said, startling him out of his thoughts. 

"I didn't say I'm going for sure."

"But you are."

"You really think that's the way to get me home? Or should I just do what Stinton said, and get away from any places the other me might be and let the gap heal without any of that bleedthrough?"

She drew in a deep breath. "This is something science can't fully explain. Maybe it's not something science can fully solve. But I do believe it's something we can turn to good. I want to be part of that."

He didn't even try to hide his relief. "Thanks. Pretty sure I can't do whatever it is I'm supposed to without you."

"Or Chuck?"

"Unfortunately."

"He's your friend. In both universes. He'll be there when you need him."

* * * * *

By the time they got back to McGinty's, Gary was done. Done with saving the world, done with talking about it, done with the ache that came from missing Marcia, just about damn done with standing upright. All he wanted was to roll into bed—carefully, of course, so he didn't land on the arm that had been shot—and sink into oblivion.

They squeezed into the office, which was made all the more crowded by the presence of Crumb, who sat at Gary's desk as if it were his own. He growled something into the phone and hung up before demanding, "Where the hell did you three run off to? Do I even want to know?" That last question was addressed to Marissa, who shrugged.

"Probably not."

"Definitely not," Chuck added. 

"I want to go to bed," Gary started, but Marissa held up a hand.

"What about the police?" she asked Crumb. "They're not here, are they?"

"No, for which you can thank me." Crumb paused for a split second, as if waiting for said thanks, then told Gary, "You'll have to give a statement, probably testify at Greer's trial. Which, since you might not be here by the time there's a trial, you should get down in writing ASAP."

"And hope Gar does the same for you," Chuck said.

Crumb turned to Marissa. "What the hell is he talking about?"

"You felt those earthquakes when we were there, didn't you?" she asked him. 

"There was a light, too," Gary admitted wearily. "This weird silver light, like I saw at the lecture. When I was in the same place as your guy."

A pained look settled over Crumb's face. "Better call my science guys. Maybe they can come talk to us tomorrow. _If_ you three can stay out of trouble until then. I'm not going through this kind of mess again, you hear me?"

Chuck nodded sagaciously. "Murtaugh syndrome."

They all stared at him blankly. All but Marissa anyway.

"Oh, come on you guys. _Lethal Weapon_? Danny Glover?" Chuck's voice dropped into a lower register. "'I'm too old for this shit.'"

"I'm not old," Crumb snapped. 

"I notice you haven't left for Idaho either," Marissa said to Crumb.

"What's Idaho got to do with anything?" Gary asked. While Crumb launched into a long explanation about trout and a log cabin, Marissa sidled past him and went out to the kitchen.

"So anyway, I have a fly-tying lady friend who works in a diner out there in Last Chance, and I had to postpone our date for the best trout week of the year to save your—or his—ass. I've been putting her off since then. It's time I high tail it out of here."

Marissa came back with a platter of food. "No one's forcing you to stay."

"Oh, like you three would have survived this week without me?" Crumb nabbed a sandwich off the plate and headed for the door. "I'm going home for the night. Don't get into any more trouble while I'm gone."

Gary hadn't even thought about being hungry until he picked up one of the sandwiches and downed it in four bites. "Okay, that definitely helps."

"Good," Marissa said, "because even though I know you're exhausted, I need you to tell me exactly what you did with our accounts before you go home." She sat down at her desk and fired up her computer and the elaborate Braille keyboard she used. "Since we don't know when that will be, sooner is better than later."

"What does it matter?" Gary was tempted to pass out on the sofa, but there was a bed upstairs that would be a hell of a lot more comfortable. "You're coming out ahead, so the place isn't going to shut down any time soon."

"It wasn't in danger of that before," Chuck said. "Was it?"

"That's up for debate," Gary told him. With a tired sigh, he leaned over Marissa to pull up the records on her computer. "To start with, you should have a column in this spreadsheet just to deal with the back taxes you guys owe on this place. How many years did this other guy get out of paying them, anyway? I can't believe he'd let it get to this point, not if he had training similar to mine."

"That isn't Gary's doing," Marissa said darkly. "Or mine."

Chuck cleared his throat and sidled toward the stairs. "Hey, guys, I'm going to head upstairs, take a shower, have a beer. Maybe something stronger."

"He let _Chuck_ do the books?"

"Gary's been extremely busy with the paper since before we took over this place," Marissa said. "And I didn't have any training in bookkeeping. Still don't, except for what I'm picking up on the job."

"I don't know what you guys are complaining about," Chuck said. "All I did was take a few creative shortcuts to get this place up and running."

"Right," Gary snorted. He pointed at Chuck. "Roll that chair over here for me. I'm going to walk her through some stuff. And you're going to explain your creative shortcuts so I can figure out how to undo them."

An hour passed quickly and companionably, to Gary's surprise. Marissa was a quick learner, and he had to wonder why the other version of him had left her in the dark, so to speak, about how to handle the bar's finances for so long. After a handful of circuitous answers about how he'd handled taxes and suppliers, Chuck finally stomped out to the bar, muttering something about recovering his reputation with the ladies since his financial credibility was shot. 

Once he was sure Marissa knew the basic steps she'd need to get their books back in order, Gary told her good night and went up to the loft. He'd barely found the remote and planted himself on the couch when she knocked on the door and came in without waiting for a response. She handed him a pint glass full of ice water. "I thought I'd better make sure you're not drinking the beer Chuck's been stashing up here with your painkillers."

"Yeah, speaking of that." He pulled the vial of pills from his shirt pocket and considered one for a moment before he popped it in his mouth and downed half the water in one gulp. 

"Long day," Marissa said when he sat back and sighed. 

"Yeah. You did good with the kids. I'd never have known what to say to them."

"I'm going to college to be a counselor."

"Makes sense." He shifted uncomfortably. "So what's the deal with Crumb? He's in my face, then he's not, doesn't know about the paper, but he's hanging around you guys all the time."

She perched on the edge of the armchair. "I'm pretty sure he knows about the paper. Or at least, he knows something's up with that copy of the _Sun-Times_ Gary always has with him. He's not just any ex-cop. He was one of the best detectives Chicago's ever had. There's no way he doesn't at least suspect. But he says he doesn't want to know. Don't quote me on this, but I think he respects you."

"Oscar the Grouch? Right."

"He saved your life today, and Gary's more than once. And Gary's saved his. Crumb feels responsible for him. For all of us."

"Huh." He sat back in the chair. "What about you? Do you feel responsible for me?"

She nodded without missing a beat. "For both of you."

"Since Chuck says you're the smart one—"

"Chuck said that?"

"Don't quote me."

She grinned.

His gaze drifted to the shelves by the window, where the Meridian sat, its mast at an angle. "So if you're the smart one, and you know psychology and all, what am I going to do about Marcia? If I do get home, he might have torpedoed my marriage." 

"I don't think Gary would do that. There's no reason for him to even go looking for your Marcia."

"Got enough of a love life here?"

"Not exactly," she said with a roll of her eyes. "He's had dates, but the paper makes things hard, or rather, he lets the paper make things hard."

That sounded suspiciously like therapy talk, the kind of thing Marcia had been encouraging him to seek out for the past year or so. But not because their relationship was in trouble. She just worried about his stress level since he'd made junior partner. 

"Marcia hurt him," Marissa went on. "I don't think he was blameless in the marriage, but she initiated the divorce the minute she thought things were unrecoverable. That's what she told him, that she knew where it was going and wanted to minimize the damage. She might have been right, but she didn't give him any warning, and consequently he's having a hard time trusting anyone with his heart. Plus he feels like he has to keep the paper a secret. It doesn't leave much time or emotional energy for romance."

"Sounds like a great life," he said through a clenched jaw. He'd waited too long to reload on the painkillers, and the new dose wasn't taking effect as quickly as he would have liked. 

Marissa must have thought he meant something else, because a rare note of hesitation crept into her voice. "Look, Gary, I know I've been kind of pushy, and that I'm anxious to get our Gary back. But it's not because I want to get rid of you."

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then figured what the heck. If he messed this up, he could blame it on the pain. Or the pills. "You might not want to hear this, but I feel like I have to say it. About yesterday, and everything before, I'm really sorry. I don't know what other word to use."

"Most people use 'sorry' as an excuse to not do anything, or to keep doing whatever it was they were doing before." She smiled faintly. "I don't mind hearing it from someone who did the wrong thing and is trying to change, and you've definitely changed. So has my understanding of who you are, and for that, I'm the one who's sorry. You did all those things because you were lost and confused and you didn't know me."

"That really doesn't excuse being an—" Whoops. Better not say that. He could feel his filters slipping away as the drug finally started numbing his brain along with his arm. But swearing at her wasn't going to fix anything. "Being a jerk," he finished instead. "Which I was. But I'll try to do better from now on, okay?"

"That's better than okay. Thank you."

"It's just…" He trailed off, hid his indecision about whether to say what he was thinking with another loud gulp of water. What the heck? "I can't live up to that guy."

She nodded as if she'd known all along he'd been worried about that very thing. "How do you know if you don't try?"

"What makes you think I want to? Who in their right mind would want this kind of life?"

"Not every day is this bad."

"But some are worse, aren't they?"

"Some are. But so far he's made it through all the days, the bad and the good. Which is kind of the point. He's survived it all, and you can, too."

"Seems to me he's survived that newspaper because he has friends."

"You don't have friends?"

He slumped down, shifting against the couch cushions until his arm was semi-comfortable. "Depends on how you define 'friends.' Chuck hasn't talked to me for a year because of the bar, but the truth is we stopped doing much of anything together before that happened. I didn't know the Miss Clark back there very well. At all, if I'm honest."

"I can't imagine not being friends with Gary," she said with a tilt of her head and the reappearance of her frown. "It's only been a couple years, but knowing him has made a huge difference in my life, and not just because of the paper. Maybe I would have been fine if I'd never met him, but I don't know if I'd have been as independent as I am now. You could try to befriend that other me when you go home."

"When I get home, my first priority is to fix my marriage."

"I told you, I don't think Gary would do anything to jeopardize it. He knows the value of a strong relationship."

From the doorway, Chuck let out a snort. Gary and Marissa both jumped.

"He's married to that paper now." Chuck strolled into the room and pushed Gary's legs off the end of the couch so he could sit. "No woman can hold a candle to it. Which is nuts, seeing as I have the schedule of an up-and-coming Hollywood producer and still meet chicks all the time."

"Like your receptionist?" Marissa asked, a little archness returning to her tone. 

Chuck winced. "Okay, so Cindy isn't the brightest bulb. It's the name, I swear. I can never resist a Cindy."

"Too many Brady Bunch reruns as a kid," Gary said.

"You're the one who married a Marcia. My point is, it is possible to do a job and have some fun on the side."

"Wow, wisdom from Chuck," Marissa said as she stood. "Who'd have thought?" Before Chuck could form a retort, she said, "I'll go make sure everything's ready for closing. Get some rest, Gary."

"Yeah. Thanks," he added belatedly. Rest sounded like the best idea he'd heard all day.

* * * * *


	26. Chapter 26

_There's a history through her_   
_Sent to us as a gift from the future_   
_To show us the proof_   
_More than that it's to dare us to move_   
_~Sara Bareilles_

 

* * *

Gary nearly fell asleep riding the bus back from Marissa's apartment. It had been a long day, and he wanted to go home. Which he forgot he couldn't do. Through sheer force of habit, he got off at a stop near McGinty's.

Before he realized his mistake, the bus had pulled away. Too tired to argue with his instinct, needing to see it for himself again, he let his feet take him a few familiar blocks to the four-story garage. He stood across the street from it and tried to see what should have been there: the warm brick bar with the pig inscribed in the sidewalk in front of the door. 

The concrete monstrosity that had taken its place was a damn haunted house. Where the window he'd looked out two days ago had been, he could make out the shapes of cars, trucks, and SUVs behind the railings. He wanted to take a baseball bat to every single one of them. Satisfying though it might be, however, it would no doubt be the last straw with Tagliotti if he got caught. He crossed the street to take a closer look at the sign out front. The prices were ridiculous. "Three bucks an hour, that's highway robbery," he muttered, and was answered by a small, strangled sound behind him. He turned and saw Tess a few feet away, gripping the handle of the plaid stroller with one hand and holding an oversized book to her chest with the other. 

"Hey," he said, stupid and tongue-tied. Though she looked like she wanted to run, she stood trapped in the circle of one of Barney Kaddison LTD's floodlights. Her hair was tucked under the bandana again, leaving cuts and bruises stark against her face. She blinked hard, as if she could will Gary away. He took a step closer. "Can we talk? Please." 

"What are you—" She gulped, looked up at the garage, down at the book, back at Gary. "Last night, and this morning, and then—I don't understand."

"I don't either, exactly," Gary admitted. But the way they kept getting thrown together had to mean something. "Maybe we should try to figure it out. I mean, we almost died together. The least we could do is level with each other." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Gary Hobson. But you knew that." 

She nodded. The baby in the stroller, hidden under a blanket except for a round face and a fringe of dark hair, let out a fussy grunt and squirmed without waking up. Tess backed up a step and rolled the stroller back and forth a few times until the baby sighed and settled more deeply into sleep.

Gary turned the unfinished handshake into a pointed finger directed at the book. It was missing its jacket, but he recognized the shape and size. "That's _Lost Chicago_ , isn't it?"

Her eyebrows drew together in a heavy line. "How do you know that? God, how do you know about any of it?"

"I get the same paper. Or I used to." Gary took a step toward Tess, but she backed away, maintaining the distance between them. Her gaze never left his face, as if she was an animal trying to read a predator. Trying to plan her escape. "What you're going through right now, I've lived it. I used to get tomorrow's paper. Today."

Tess blinked down at the book, then back at him. "That's what you think is going on here?"

"That's what I know is going on. I know what you're going through, and how hard it can be." He waited a second for the realization that someone knew and understood her impossible situation to hit home, but she stared as fiercely as ever. "Look, Tess, I know you're trying to help the people you read about. That bus crash, the fire last night, the crash I could have been in this morning. The insurance office this afternoon. You're trying to keep people from getting hurt, trying to save their lives. I know because I've done it myself."

"Is that how you knew about Cage?"

"Uh, no, that was a little different. This afternoon I heard the call on the police scanner and wanted to help. I promise that's all I want," he added, because her eyes widened and she was starting to look panicky. "To help."

Tess's grip on the stroller tightened. "What about money?"

"What money?"

"You could make a lot of it, with a newspaper that tells the future."

"That's not what I want. That's not what it's for."

The edges of her frown softened, but Gary couldn't tell if it was with relief or disappointment. She lowered her voice and checked to make sure no one was around, but other than a few people staggering out of Gene and Georgetti's, the street was quiet. "Do you get the special delivery in another city?"

"Kind of." Gary gave the parking garage a scowl. "Kind of not. I used to live right here before it was a parking garage."

She opened the book and turned it around to show Gary the page. "Here?"

Gary reached out and traced the outline of McGinty's in the black and white photo. "Yeah. With him." He pointed at the small animal crouched at the entrance to the bar in the picture. 

"That's my cat," Tess finished. She said it as if having a cat was the most normal, natural thing in the world. And it should have been. 

So why did it make Gary's stomach lurch? "Your cat, as in you own it?"

She shrugged. "Or he owns me. Not like I can keep him in tuna, but he seems happy with diner scraps and Le—the baby likes him. So he hangs with us."

The question hammered at Gary's brain: since when? But he had to go easy here, tiptoe up to asking about what had happened to Marissa. If he scared Tess off now she might never speak to him again. "Do you know where he is now?"

"He hasn't been around much the last few days." Though she still held herself warily, poised for flight, Gary thought he recognized a note of relief in her voice. "Is that why the paper's all messed up? Why it keeps changing?"

"I don't know for sure."

"Then why are you here?" She leaned over the handles of the stroller. "Did you get the paper before Evan Cooper?"

"I don't know. Who's Evan Cooper?" After a brief staredown, which Tess would have won no matter how long he let it go on, Gary added, "I'm here to help, I swear. I know it seems like I've been following you."

"More like stalking."

He shrugged, acknowledging the point. "I didn't know any other way to find you. To help you, if you need it." He paused, as if he were waiting through the noise of the bus that blasted past them on Illinois, but she kept staring him down. "And I wanted to thank you," he finally added. "You saved my life. You saved a lot of lives this afternoon. I wanted to tell you that afterward, but you disappeared."

"There was—" She swallowed what Gary assumed was a paper-related emergency. "I had to pick up my daughter because my mom's working a night shift, and it sucks because—" She bit her lip.

"Because it never stops," Gary finished.

"It never stops," she echoed, blinking at him, and for the first time something other than wariness showed in her expression. As if to confirm what they'd just said, a "meow" sounded from down by her ankles. "Hey, there, Kit-Kat. Where the hell have you been?" She let go of the stroller long enough to scoop up Cat and tickle him under his chin. He purred so loud Gary could hear it. "Why are you messing with me, huh? And what is this guy doing here?"

"Tess." Gary fought the urge to reach out and take her by the shoulders by shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "I know, okay? I know. You want to help people, but that might mean you can't live your own life, and it seems like Cat wants to help, but he's not there when you need him most, and it never stops, because the paper just keeps coming every morning." She nodded, blinking. Gary couldn't tell if there were tears involved. "I know that much. I can't even imagine what it must be like to do it with a baby, and I want to help. Can we go somewhere and talk?"

"I can't."

"I swear, I won't hurt you." 

"It's not that. It's this." She let Cat jump out of her arms and pulled the _Sun-Times_ from the back pocket of the stroller. Cat positioned himself in front of the stroller so that his sweeping tail tickled the baby's chin and nose. Its green eyes were fixed firmly on Gary as Tess turned the paper so he could see. She watched him with an intensity equal to Cat's as she said, "There's going to be a knife fight at The Alibi. I have to stop it." She looked down at the stroller. "Somehow."

Gary knew better than to ask why she was bringing her daughter to a knife fight. She had to be out of choices. "Yeah, you do. But not alone."

"Why not alone? I've been doing it alone from the beginning."

"Maybe if you weren't alone, you could stop some of the robberies and stuff that keep happening. Or that train that derailed yesterday."

"None of that was my fault. God, I did what I could! You have no idea what I _did_ prevent!"

"I know." Gary held out a placating hand. "I mean, I don't know, you're right. But isn't it possible that you could have done more if you'd had help?"

Her jaw set. "Nothing personal, but I don't even know you. Why should I trust you?"

"He does," Gary said. He sidled a little closer and reached over to scratch Cat behind the ears. Cat purred and licked his hand. "He trusts me, so maybe you can, too?"

Tess bit her lip. Looked from the story to the stroller to Gary. "Maybe. You have to keep up."

"We running late?"

She turned the stroller around and started down the street. "She only stays asleep if I keep her moving."

"What's her name?"

They walked half a block before Tess answered. "Lexie. Alexandra, from a book I read in high school. She was the strongest woman we read about." She snorted ruefully. "I didn't know then how strong my baby would have to be."

Gary didn't have any trouble keeping up with the pace Tess set. It was his own thoughts he kept tripping over. She was trying to manage the same disasters he did. At her age. With a baby. And this screwed-up version of Chicago. "How do you decide which stories to fix?" 

She shot him a glower, but kept walking, leading them east and north in a stair step pattern. "I can't do it all. I have to choose." It sounded as if she was choking on the word.

"Is that what you did this afternoon with Cage? You chose?"

"The paper said this guy was going to die. Same guy I saw in a car that almost flipped over this morning. Seemed like I was supposed to help him out for some damn reason." She pushed the button to activate the walk light on Rush Street, then plowed out into the intersection before it changed. "Look, I didn't want this paper, okay? I didn't want any of it. So if you're here to tell me I failed some kind of test, I don't fucking care. If you want the paper, take it, but if not, get off my back and let me do the work."

Gary stepped aside and behind her to let a group of partiers pass. From behind, he saw Tess pass a surreptitious hand over her eyes. After the day she'd had, she was probably on the verge of losing control. Probably thought she was on the verge of losing everything.

"I'm not here to judge you," he told her when he caught up. "I'm not from the paper, or whatever sends it. I'm just as confused about what's going on and why I'm here as you are, I promise. There's plenty I want to know, but right now all I want to do is help."

"Sure you do."

He had to find a way to prove himself to her. He drew himself up and made eye contact with everyone they passed to make sure anybody who had ideas about messing with Tess or the baby would think twice. Cat stuck with them, taking the occasional detour to strut along the top of a bus bench or newspaper dispenser. They walked a little over a mile before they reached a two-block stretch full of nightclubs and bars, where the streets were crowded with people who seemed very young and very, very drunk.

Gary hated bar fights. The only way to solve them usually involved turning both parties' attention toward something or someone else, and all too often that someone was him. He'd had enough of that in the insurance office. But Tess had had worse. 

The Alibi was a block off Rush Street. It had a patio that probably served as a tiny parking lot during the day. Now it was hosting a dance party. Possibly it was a rave; Gary'd never been sure exactly what a rave actually was. There was a tiny bar set up in one corner of the lot and a stage made of what looked like a stack of delivery pallets, where a band that sounded like a chorus of buzz saws was playing. The whole thing was lit with strings of Christmas lights and marked off with traffic barricades, with four bouncers stationed along the length of the makeshift fence. The sound the band produced could only be called music because a bassist was keeping time with the determination of John Henry. Despite the crowds and the noise, Lexie dozed on in her stroller, which Tess kept rolling back and forth even when they stopped across the street from the bar.

"I've got this." Gary had to shout to make himself heard. "I'll talk to the bouncer." He gestured to the guy who could have been Marissa's friend Frank's Latino twin, standing by the center barricade and seemingly holding the dancers on the lot by bulk and sheer force of will. "He might know the ladies involved."

Tess barked out a laugh. "You're kidding, right?"

"You got any better ideas?"

She rolled her eyes. "I've got fifteen at least." She pulled the bandana off her head and tucked it into the back pocket of the stroller.

Gary wanted to take over, to show her he could help, but he didn't want to make her mad and send her running away again. "Okay, fine, what do we do?"

"You stay with Lexie." Tess stuffed the paper into the stroller and thrust the handles at him. She fluffed and scrunched her hair with her fingers and knotted the hem of her oversized t-shirt up high and tight enough that her midriff was exposed.

Gary's gaping reaction must have been enough. Tess nodded at Cat, who had taken to headbutting Gary's shins. "I'm only trusting you because he does, and I have no other choice. Keep her safe, or I will find you no matter where you go." She spun on her heel and started across the street.

"Wait!" Gary called after her, but broke off when the baby started to cry. One foot on the curb, Tess looked back to him and made a back-and-forth pushing motion with her hands. Once he started moving the stroller, eliciting a satisfied grunt from the baby, Tess crossed the street and said something to the bouncer. He shot a dubious look over at Gary, but let her in when she flashed a card at him. "Is she old enough to get in?" he asked Cat. 

She was old enough, he realized when he caught sight of her again, to know exactly what she was doing. She'd made her way to the front and center of the tiny dance area, moving her arms, her head, her whole body in perfect time to the cacophony. She approached a trio, two girls and a boy, and shimmied her way in among them all. With a toss of her head, she turned her back to the guy and wiggled against him. He gave her a little push toward the taller of the girls. Tess danced with the girl for a moment, checked back to be sure the guy was watching, then got even closer to the girl, circling her arms up in the air like a belly dancer's before draping them over the girl's shoulder. All around them, men turned to watch, hooting and whistling. 

The move was certainly not in Gary's repertoire of ways to stop a knife fight. "But I could have managed a distraction," he told Cat and the sleeping baby. Just then, Tess's hands slithered down the girl's back and into the pockets of her skin-tight jeans. The girl writhed and giggled over Tess's shoulder, all her attention on the guys' reaction, so that when one of Tess's hands flashed out of the pocket and dove back into her own, she didn't even notice. "Okay, not that distraction," he admitted. Tess gave one last wiggle between the couple as the song ended, then spun her way through the crowd to the edge of the dance floor. She slipped out between two of the barricades and waved Gary to the corner, where she crossed and met him, dangling the knife between her thumb and finger. 

"That was some show you put on." Gary started down the street, still pushing the stroller, but she nudged him away with her hip as she took the handles. 

"What were you going to do, Ranger Rick? Talk to her? I'm sure there'll still be a fight." Tess dropped the pocket knife down a sewer grate. "But nobody'll bleed to death over it."

"I wasn't criticizing. Just admiring."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm sure you enjoyed the view."

He took a step sideways, hands out in front of him. "Hey, now, that's not what I meant. I'm old enough to be your older brother."

She let out an odd laugh.

"What?" 

Coming to an abrupt stop in front of a closed barber shop, she looked him up and down. "There's a lot more to you than Archie or Scooby Doo. I should have known when you asked for the _Sun-Times_." Cat meowed in agreement.

"Yeah, well, I'll tell you something, you're not Betty or Veronica. You're Wonder Woman."

"If that's true, I want my invisible airplane." She watched Cat stroll protectively around the stroller for a minute. Its tail curved around the toes that peeked out from under Lexie's blanket. Gary waited, not wanting to push too hard. Finally, Tess seemed to make up her mind; she gave the Cat a nod and told Gary, "Thanks for staying with Lex. I couldn't have gotten in with her, and I'm pretty sure the bouncers weren't in the mood to babysit."

"You probably have to take her home, huh? Past her bedtime."

She fixed him with an inscrutable look. 

"I could walk you there," he offered. "To make sure nothing happens."

She flicked a finger at the back pocket of the stroller, where the edge of the newspaper peeked out. "Nothing more's going to happen tonight. And nothing personal, but I'm not sure I want you to know where I live."

He waited for a 'yet' that didn't come. "Okay, fair enough. I do know where you work, though."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing! I just—I want to talk to you, to explain a little more about who I am and what I know about the paper. I want to help you, Tess."

"I stopped that fight just fine on my own." 

"I did watch your kid for you. And earlier today, with Cage, that was both of us, wasn't it? Could you maybe consider the possibility that the paper could be the best—" He stopped for a second to nod toward Lexie. "One of the best things that ever happens to you, but only if you let someone help you out?" Where had that come from? It sounded familiar.

"I didn't ask for this."

"I know you didn't. Neither did I." But some part of her must have wanted it, or the purpose it could give her life, just like Marissa was always telling him. "Maybe together we can figure out how to handle it."

While Tess was still staring at him with her unreadable eyes, Lexie stirred again and let out a cry. "She needs to eat," Tess finally said. "Let's go to the diner."

"It's still open?" Gary asked as he fell into step next to her.

"No."

"But you'd rather have me there than at your place."

She shrugged. "Stan keeps a supply of formula and diapers on hand for Lex. I have to work in a few hours anyway. Might as well park ourselves there."

* * * * *

Gary fell asleep in the middle of the fifth inning. Chuck couldn't exactly blame him. The guy needed some shuteye, and the painkillers the doctor had given him didn't leave him much choice.

He thought about calling his cousin Vince, who could easily get him six to one on the Sox victory Chuck knew was coming. The minute Gary'd gone down for the count he'd read every score in tomorrow's paper. 

He had the phone in his hand, the number half-dialed, but he stopped when Gary let out a snore. Why had he waited? This guy wouldn't care if Chuck used the paper to make a bet. But there was another guy who would, and much as Chuck didn't want to admit it, he didn't exactly want to tell that guy about some of the stuff he'd done the past few days. 

On the other hand, he had come all the way out from California. Given up a couple leads on possible funding for his projects. Sacrificed his own immediate future to figure out what was happening in his past. He figured he was owed a little recompense, and the paper was the best way to get it. He'd already bumped his portfolio up quite a bit thanks to this version of Gary. But he couldn't stop wondering how he'd explain it to Gar if he ever found out. To _his_ Gary, as Marissa kept calling him. He put the phone down. 

For another half hour, he tried staring at the television, then the ceiling, but he was caught between a game that was too boring to keep him awake and Gary's snores, which wouldn't let him doze off. So he ambled downstairs with the vague thought that something stronger than a beer might help him sleep. Instead, he found Marissa in the office, plugged into her headphones and the other adaptive tech she used for McGinty's bookkeeping. He tapped her on the shoulder. When she lifted the headphones away from one ear, he asked, "You can't let it go tonight?" 

"I haven't had a lot of time to deal with the day-to-day business lately," she said. "Someone around here has to."

"Yeah, I know." He perched on a corner of her desk. "You okay?"

She started to nod, then pursed her lips and pulled her headphones all the way off. "Kind of."

"And kind of not?" Remembering what she'd said in the hospital earlier, not to mention the look on her face when she'd said it, he added, "You might resent being the one to stay at times like this, but you're doing a better job with everything than I could. It's good, for Gary anyway, that you're the one who stayed."

Marissa sat back in her chair. "Chuck Fishman, was that a compliment?"

"Strictly off the record. If you tell anyone I said it, especially Gar, I'll deny it." Even though she couldn't see it, he nodded toward the other side of the desk. "You mind if I use his computer? I just want to find out what's going on back at my office."

She shrugged. "You're still an owner. It's as much your computer as anyone's."

"I just want to check my email. Gotta figure out how to get messages from my office phone. My secretary is less than reliable."

"Quelle surprise," Marissa snarked. "I'll be right back."

While Chuck looked over his email—there were no messages from investors, which was unfortunate but not unexpected—she went out to the kitchen and came back with a basket of fries that she balanced on the crack between the two desks. They ate and worked in companionable silence until Chuck let out a sigh at the string of messages he'd missed, and she asked how the production company was doing. He gave her a summary of the people he'd met with, all the times he'd nearly closed deals on movies or shows that had then fallen though. 

"Sounds discouraging," Marissa said.

"It should be, but somehow it's not. Maybe because I'm taking all the risk on myself. Here at McGinty's, I always had to bounce things off Gary. Out there I can live on the edge, you know?"

"I guess we all want that, in different ways."

He couldn't help a snort. "You?"

"You think I don't take chances, working here, helping Gary with the paper when he'll let me?"

"Huh." Chuck waited for her raised eyebrow, then asked, "You kind of get off on this, don't you?"

"I wouldn't put it that way. But it is satisfying."

"You enjoy being noble. That's not news."

Marissa crossed her arms. "You're saying it's selfish?"

"Only in the best possible way."

"Maybe you're right," she admitted. "There are people who think I won't ever be more than a bookkeeper. Sometimes even Gary seems to believe that. I enjoy proving them wrong."

"Yeah, well." He tapped a finger on Gary's mouse, not quite sure how to say this, let alone if he should. "Be careful, okay? With Gary and his paper, it's easy to get so sucked in you lose track of who it is you want to be. After a couple years around the paper I started to feel like—" He broke off, half-hoping Marissa would interrupt him. When she didn't, he said, "I'm not interested in being his sidekick. I want to be the star of my own story, so to speak. Don't you ever want that?"

"This isn't a television show, Chuck. It's real life, and we aren't here to be second bananas. If you thought that, you wouldn't have come running when Gary went missing."

"If you didn't think that, you wouldn't have told me not to come."

"Mmmm." She shot him a half-smile, but then her shoulders drooped. "Do you think I've been too hard on him? Not just the guy sleeping upstairs, but our Gary?

"Like I keep saying—or like I _should_ keep saying—he wouldn't make it through without you. Sounds like the bar wouldn't either."

"This other Gary seems to think the bar's not doing all that well. He has a way of explaining things, though. After tonight, I have a better handle on our bookkeeping system." She let out a sigh. "We can't keep going like this, though. I want our Gary back. This can't be permanent, can it?" 

"Don't ask that."

"Why not?"

"Around here?" Chuck snagged the last French fry and scraped it through the ketchup. "The universe has a way of answering. And it's not always what we want to hear."

* * * * *


	27. Chapter 27

_She's imperfect, but she tries_   
_She is good, but she lies_   
_She is hard on herself_   
_She is broken and won't ask for help_   
_She is messy, but she's kind_   
_She is lonely most of the time_   
_She is gone, but she used to be mine_   
_~Sara Bareilles_

* * *

 

It felt like a lot more than two days had passed since Gary had been at the diner. He'd pulled Tess's copy of _Lost Chicago_ out of the stroller and was paging through it at the counter, though there was really only one page that interested him. Though the book seemed old, the corners of its covers worn to grey, it reported the old fire station where McGinty's had been housed as having been torn down in 1996, just over a year ago. How was he supposed to explain what was going on to Tess when it kept confusing the hell out of him?

"Sage never refills the napkins or the condiments." Tess flicked a nod at the end of the booth where she sat feeding her baby from a bottle. "And I bet Dylan didn't mop in the women's room. They always let stuff slide when they close, but Stan won't fire them. He's such a softie." 

Gary poked his head into the restrooms and reported, "Doesn't look like either one of them got mopped. Where's the cleaning equipment?"

"You don't have to do that."

"I said I'm here to help. I own a bar, so I know how this stuff goes. Let me do this much."

She shrugged. "Suit yourself. Closet in the kitchen, next to the walk-in."

He made his way into the kitchen through the semi-darkness. Tess had turned on a few lights above the counter, and the chrome fixtures reflected a silvery glow. "I figure it's the least I can do, since your boss is offering us shelter tonight. Whether he knows it or not."

When he'd found the mops and filled a rolling bucket with water from the kitchen sprayer, he headed back out into the dining room, where Tess stood bouncing Lexie on her shoulder. Gary caught the baby's eye and stuck out his tongue at her as he passed them. Lexie stuck hers out in response.

"Which one?" Tess asked as Gary propped the door to the men's room open with a trash can and started mopping.

"Which one what?"

"Which bar do you own?"

He pointed the mop handle at the copy of _Lost Chicago_ on the counter, open to the picture of McGinty's. "That one."

"Figures." She buckled Lexie, whose eyelids were starting to droop, in her stroller, dropped a kiss on her curls, then went around gathering up salt and pepper shakers. 

Gary took care of the floors in the bathrooms, and then under the booths, where he'd spotted more than one ketchup spill. When he reached the last one, he leaned on the mop handle, watching Tess refill the shakers at the end of the counter. "I didn't want to like you, you know," he blurted out. She looked up at him, startled. "I mean, before I knew who you were. A friend of mine got hurt a couple months ago. I was upset that whoever got the paper let that happen."

Emotions flitted across her face in a high-speed slide show: shock, sympathy, regret. Then her expression settled into something dark and angry. "A couple months ago I had no idea this thing existed. I was learning how to take care of a baby, barely keeping my head above water."

Which meant she wasn't responsible for what had happened to Marissa. Relief washed down his back. He still wanted to know who _had_ been responsible, but for the moment, that wasn't as important as making sure Tess could help every new person who showed up in her paper. "How are you doing now? Smooth sailing?"

She rolled her eyes. "Days like today I feel like I'm going under."

"Not if I can help it, you're not."

"And how are you going to help it?" she scoffed, then looked up from the pepper she'd spilled. "Sorry. I'm—I don't know."

"Exhausted," Gary supplied. "Want some coffee or something?"

"What I want is sleep."

He dumped out the bucket and put the mops back in the closet, started a half pot of coffee for himself, then poured Tess a glass of ice water. He set it down on the booth nearest Lexie's stroller and waved her over. "Sit down. Sleep if you want to. I've got this." He finished refilling the salt and pepper shakers, then distributed them to their spots on the counter and in the booths. "How old is she?" he asked when he reached Tess's booth. It seemed like the safest question. 

"Four months. And no, I'm not married."

"I didn't ask that."

"You keep checking my ring finger." She took a sip of her water and made a face. "Rick got the med school scholarship and the Playstation; I got the kid and a three-semester setback. And counting, I guess," she added, flicking a finger at the paper. "At the rate this thing is going I'll have to take an incomplete on my one summer class, too. When did it start coming to you?"

He poured a cup of coffee and brought it and _Lost Chicago_ to the booth, where he eased himself into the seat across from Tess. "My wife threw my suitcase out the window on our anniversary. I ended up in a hotel room where the guy who got it before me had lived. He's in your book." Gary flipped pages to the shot of Lucius Snow at the Sun-Times. "Does he look familiar?"

"Nope." She looked from the picture to Gary, down to Cat, and back to Gary. "But his cat does."

"Pretty sure it's the same cat. He showed up my first day with the paper, too. Like I said, my wife kicked me out and Snow had just died. I guess somebody or something decided I needed to run around all day saving people." Talk about making a long story short. "Please tell me no one threw a suitcase at you."

"Just a plate glass window," Tess muttered, rubbing her forehead.

"Hey, I'm sorry about that." Gary slid his hand toward her side of the table, then pulled it back. "Cage was so nuts, I was afraid if I tried to stop him he'd hurt you even worse."

"He might have killed me." Tess looked down at the baby with a shudder. She reached for her water glass, but her hand was shaking too badly to grip it. "He probably would have, if you hadn't been there, and—oh, God." She rested her head on top of the baby's. "Damn Evan anyway."

"Who's that?"

She looked up, fixing him with a narrowed gaze that was going to be her greatest weapon as a parent someday. "Not until you finish answering my question."

He felt a little twinge, an impulse to cover up everything about the paper and himself that he hid from most of the world. It was habit by now. But Tess wasn't most of the world.

"After my wife sent me packing, I moved into the same hotel Snow had lived in, purely by coincidence. Or at least that's what I thought then. The paper showed up the next morning, along with the cat. I didn't know what it was at first. Took me a couple false starts, I guess you could call them. But then I figured out—no. A friend _pointed_ out that I should use it to help people." Gary shrugged, looked down at his hands, then back up at her. He figured she knew this part. "Didn't seem like I had much choice."

Tess watched Lexie for a minute or so. Finally, she nodded at the book, at the photo of Snow. "He was old when the picture was taken, and the picture's old. How long do you think he had the paper?"

"Decades, probably." 

She shut her eyes. 

"But you know what else I think?" Gary added quickly. "I think he found a way to live with it. I think we can, too."

"You said you don't get it anymore."

"Yeah, well, that's something else I'll explain, but first I want to hear your story." He wasn't even sure how to bring up the whole duplicate universe mess. "How did the paper come to you? Did you know before I told you that Snow here used to get it?" 

"I told you, I don't know anything about him. The guy before me was a dick."

Gary blinked, surprised. "Nate Hill?" 

"Who? No, Evan Cooper. He was a regular here for years." She glanced around at the shadowed booths, her gaze landing on the one by the window where Gary had sat what felt like a month ago. "I remember seeing him before I worked here, when I was still in high school and would come with my dad. Back when my dad still wanted to spend time with me." She cleared her throat and took another drink of her water. "Anyway. Stan said Evan never used to be much of a tipper, was always kind of down on his luck and mopey, and then one day in February, not this past February but the one before, he came in acting so happy we thought he was high. Bought coffee for the house and left me a twenty dollar tip. Said he'd won the Powerball. Twenty million dollar jackpot."

Gary whistled. "Sounds like something Chuck would do."

"Who's Chuck?"

"Friend of mine," Gary said with a dismissive wave, both because he wanted Tess to continue her story and to brush away the niggling guilt when he realized Chuck was probably wondering where the hell he was.

"He was a completely different person after that," Tess went on. "For a little more than a year, he left those big tips and random gift cards, came in at strange hours wearing nice suits or a fancy leather jacket. Bought a Mustang and moved to the Gold Coast. And he always had a cat with him—this cat." She scratched Cat behind his ears and he butted at her palm with his head. "Stan used to tell him he couldn't bring it in, but Evan always said he couldn't control it, that it wasn't really his cat."

Gary cleared his throat. "Did he tell you about the paper?"

She shook her head. "Not even when he started to end up in the paper a lot, a couple times a month, for being a hero. Saving kids from accidents, delivering babies on the L, getting the Coast Guard out to a boat crash in time to save everyone who would have drowned. You couldn't open up the _Sun-Times_ , or the _Trib_ for that matter, without seeing his mug. What?" she asked at Gary's frown.

"I've found it's a lot easier to do paper stuff if I stay out of the stories," he said.

"That was part of his problem. Not all of it, but he told me to avoid it if—" She broke off, spinning a salt shaker on the Formica table. After a moment, she said, "We used to talk, nothing too personal. He was older than me. Almost as old as you. He was a decent guy deep down. He gave me a bunch of gift certificates as tips to buy stuff for Lex when she was born. But then one week, he had a bad run. Came in beat up. His car was totaled, and he was back to being depressed, but this time it seemed more focused, more like something really bad had happened. It was right about the time all the banks were being robbed, the tellers shot. You remember that?"

Gary started to say he didn't, but he'd have to explain why, so he gave her a half-shrug, half-nod. 

"I didn't put it together then, but once he told me about the paper I understood. He'd known about the robberies, but he hadn't been able to save anyone. Anyway, after that he stopped coming around for about a month, and then he came back, one last time. Said the police were after him. He told me I was a good person, a better person than him, and that maybe I was the kind of person meant to do something amazing. Something he couldn't do. He dropped a copy of the _Sun-Times_ on the counter with a five hundred dollar tip, said, 'There's been a mistake, this is yours,' and took off. Never saw him again. The police came in the day after that, though."

"What had he done?"

"It was what he failed to do, I think. They said he was on the scene of one of the robberies and they wanted to ask him questions. I was curious, so I looked up the story. There'd been a robbery attempt up in Skokie, but it turned into a hostage situation. They had a bomb, and one of the hostages was killed. His name was Joshua Cooper."

"He was related to Evan?"

"His brother. A few days later I got a letter from Evan with no return address, postmarked Cabo San Lucas. It was full of instructions for how to use the paper and what not to do. 'Don't use the paper to make money; keep yourself out of the articles; don't tell anyone about it, especially not people you care about.'" She sighed. "I'll probably never know for sure what happened, but Joshua Cooper didn't live in Skokie, and he didn't have an account with that bank."

"So you think…what?" Gary spun his hand, trying to pull her reasoning out of thin air. "He went there to help his brother, and that got him killed? And that's why Evan gave up the paper?" Was it possible to hand it off like that? Gary had tried to give it up once and it hadn't worked, but then again, he hadn't lost a family member because of the paper. Yet.

Tess nodded. "Though I have to say, if you want to work off a load of guilt, there are a lot worse places to do it than Cabo. I had no idea what he meant about the paper. I'd thrown it away the day he gave it to me."

"But it kept coming back."

"Every morning. With the cat."

"When did you know what it was?" Gary asked. "I mean, what it really was, and what it was for?"

"At first I didn't understand. I figured Evan was lost in grief and the paper was a warped version of one of his gift card tips. I let things go by for a couple days, just trying to take care of Lex and finish my semester, and then there was an article about a dad who didn't see his kid playing in the driveway and backed over her with the Land Rover."

"Except he didn't," Gary guessed when he saw a familiar light flicker in her eyes, a spark of satisfaction. "You stopped it."

She nodded. "And then there was another story I could change, and another one, and it kind of snowballed until I missed two finals. That's why I'm taking a summer school class." Her spark was snuffed out by a look of regret. "I was planning to go to law school or the police academy before I got pregnant. Now this. But I can't stop every little thing, I just can't. I have to triage. I can't turn into him."

"Not Evan, no," Gary said. He didn't want her to turn out like Nate Hill, either.

"While I was trying to find out where Evan had gone, I learned a few more things about him. For one, he was wanted for insider trading, not just as a witness to the robbery. He hadn't won the lottery, he'd played the market. And his police file was thicker than a Malnati's pizza."

"How did you manage to see that?"

She shrugged. "You can get away with a lot if you act like you belong somewhere, even if it's a police station."

"Like you did tonight," Gary acknowledged. 

"I'm studying criminal justice. Like I said, I thought I wanted to be a cop, so I know a little bit about how they work. Once I had Lex, I thought about going to law school instead. Seems less dangerous. But I'll never be able to afford that. After today, I probably can't even walk into the precinct without getting locked up. That detective acted like the whole thing with Cage was my fault."

"She doesn't think that. I made sure she didn't."

"Right. Mr. Helpful." Lexie stirred, letting out a mewling cry. "No, sweetie, c'mon." Tess tried to push the stroller, but she was at an awkward angle. Gary reached his foot over and hooked it on the bottom brace. As soon as he found the back-and-forth rhythm, Lexie let out a sigh and quieted again. 

"Thanks. We're still working on sleeping through the night." Tess flicked a finger at the paper. "This doesn't help."

Gary nodded, thinking through what to say next. He didn't want to give her bad advice, and after living with, and being divorced from, his version of Marcia, he wasn't inclined to tell anyone to go to law school. Not to mention the paper had fallen into their lives at such different places. "I know this thing can change your path. It did with me. I quit my job as a stockbroker, drifted around for a while, until I sort of inherited the bar, and that was because of the paper, too. It'll play havoc with your life, mess with your head. But if you give it time, the paper can make your path clearer."

She snorted. "Yeah, you seem like the picture of mental clarity."

"Okay, that's probably fair. But I didn't have the paper today, did I? You wouldn't let me see it. And I don't blame you," he added quickly. "What I'm trying to say is, I think what I never saw, or forgot, is that the paper can make your life better, but you have to let it. I'm betting Evan told you to keep it secret because he messed it up so badly. I know it's hard to work a job and take care of your kid and manage the paper. I mean, I don't know," he said at her look. "But I know enough to imagine what you're going through. Have you thought about talking to the police about it? Even if you don't tell them, you have a magic newspaper, you could get them—one of them—to trust you. You could be kind of an informant."

Tess gaped at him for a second. "Do you know what the police will do to me if I keep going back to them? I have a four month old, for God's sake, and I am all she has. You should have seen that detective this afternoon. She hates me."

"Tagliotti? That might be my fault. She's—"

"Intense," Tess filled in. "And suspicious. She called me a bad mother!"

"She did?"

"She implied it. Said if I cared about my kid, I wouldn't have stuck my neck out to help those people. To help _you_." Tess swept an arm, first indicating the stroller, then the whole diner. "I have shaped my life to take care of Lex. I changed everything, and then the paper changed everything all over again, but I still put her first. Always. How _dare_ that cop imply I'm failing her?"

Gary blew out a sigh. "I'm sorry. If it helps, I found out today she lost someone, and she ties it to the paper, even though she doesn't know about it." He was working it out for himself more than telling Tess. He realized his mistake when she blanched and sat back.

"I'm not going to the police again, especially not to her. They'll take my daughter away, if the paper doesn't take me away from her first. My mom is already threatening to pull her offer of free babysitting if I don't start keeping more regular hours." 

Maybe that was why he was here. Maybe the only way to help was to take the paper off her hands. To take her place. 

But when he looked at Cat standing guard next to the baby, when he considered staying in a place where McGinty's only existed as a photograph in an old book, he was sure in his gut that couldn't be right. "At first I thought I wanted to get away from the paper too," he told her. "But it gets under your skin. As much as I've wished it away, I know I'm not ready to give up my own version of the paper."

"What do you mean, your own version of the paper?"

"There's something else you should know about me."

His coffee went from undrinkably hot to disgustingly cold while he told Tess about where he was really from, and how it wasn't the only strange thing that had happened to him since the paper started coming. When he'd finished, she sat back in her booth, some of the tired lines on her face eased by surprise. Or maybe disbelief. "So you're from another universe? All that shit Rick talked about from his advanced physics classes, that was real?"

"I'm not sure how much is physics and how much is the paper messing around with me," Gary admitted. "But it is real. Somehow our different universes or membranes or something touched when I bumped into a version of myself, and I ended up in this universe instead of my own. I'm guessing the paper sent me here to help you out."

"The paper…sent you," she practically growled. "To another universe."

"I wouldn't have believed it, either, but a few months ago I time traveled. The people I helped out back in 1871 ended up making a difference in something that was supposed to happen in the present, in my present. So I guess, yeah, the paper can make stuff like that happen if it will help me do my job."

"If you're lying to me…" She trailed off, her jaw working while she scrutinized him. "If you're playing some kind of prank, I will personally kick your ass off the nearest bridge and into the river."

"I'm not, I swear. The paper is real, and so is—" He waved an arm, taking in the diner, himself, her, and _Lost Chicago_. "—all of this. You can talk to a Dr. Stinton at U Chicago, or Morris in the _Sun-Times_ archives, or Marissa Clark and Chuck Fishman at Strauss and Associates."

"What's that, some kind of multidimensional law office?"

"Brokerage. Very one dimensional. Look, I don't know what else to tell you, except that you've seen what the paper can do. If it's possible to come in from the future and guide you to save people's lives, isn't it also possible it can do this?" As if to prove the point, Cat jumped up next to Gary on the bench, nuzzling his arm as if he was begging for tuna. Tess looked from one to the other, swallowing hard. Her expression had softened, but instead of shifting to open belief in him, she'd gone wide-eyed with worry.

Before she could answer, though, Lexie stirred, making distressed noises that sounded like the beginnings of an angry cry. Tess took her out of the stroller and stood, patting her on the back while she sang a verse of "Me and Bobby Magee" into the top of her head. Cat purred against Gary's arm as they both watched the baby try to burrow into Tess's shoulder. For once, Gary didn't push Cat away. He told himself it was because Cat was the closest thing to home he was going to get around here.

Tess made a couple loops of the diner, singing some more and averting her eyes whenever she got close to Gary's booth. Finally, after her third pass, she stopped in front of the booth. Her voice was low and soft when she asked Gary, "Will the paper make stuff like that—time travel, dimensional-membrane-multiverse-whatever—happen to me?"

He wanted to tell her it wouldn't. Wanted to wipe the frown that he'd thought was resentment or disbelief, but was more likely born of fear, off her bruised face. Wanted to believe the paper wouldn't do what it had done to him to this kid. To this mother. But what he wanted and what was true were two different things. 

"I don't know that. I never know what to expect." Distress deepened the lines around her eyes, and she opened her mouth, but he held up a hand. "The thing is, it seems like the paper only does something this drastic to me when someone else really needs my help." He nudged Cat. "Kind of like what he does, showing us where to go when the information in the paper isn't enough, only bigger. And I've been able to get home once I've done what I'm supposed to do. So far."

"So far," she repeated with a snort, sounding a lot like Crumb.

"Like my friend Marissa says, the paper, or whatever sends it, isn't going to put us into situations we can't handle. And if we get into trouble, like you did today, it sends us people who can help."

" _You_ were the one who showed up in the article about the hostage situation," she pointed out. 

"True, but what would have happened to you if I hadn't been there?" 

Her face twisted into a scowl again, but Lexie hiccupped out a couple more half-cries, and the scowl turned into a wince. "I don't know," she admitted. "So you think you were sent here to jump in and take care of the things I can't handle?"

"I'm guessing it's more along the lines of showing you how to manage everything so that you're able to handle the tough stuff. Which starts with asking for help from the people around you. I felt like I was on my own when the paper first started coming, but my friends rallied around me, listened to me, backed me up." In more ways than one, and in ways he hadn't always acknowledged, he thought guiltily. "That's what I think you need, too." 

She relaxed a fraction, leaning back against a stool and sh-sh-sh-ing into Lexie's ear. "You make it sound so easy. Who am I supposed to tell? Stan?"

"Why not? He seems to care about you."

"Stan's the only person in my life who's never called Lex a mistake," she said. "But that's why I can't tell him. Evan's brother died trying to help him. He said anyone I told would be in danger. If I lose Stan, I lose my only source of income. Rick took all our friends with him when we split up. How am I supposed to make new ones when I'm pulled in so many different directions?"

"You have to find someone to talk to. If you don't get help, you'll get yourself killed, or everything you have to do will—it'll break your heart." 

She squeezed her eyes shut. "It nearly did today."

"Yeah, I get that." It'd nearly broken his, realizing who she was, and how much trouble the paper was already making in her life. "And I hate to say this, but I don't think either one of us has seen the worst that could happen." For the past two years, whether he was aware of it or not, he'd been operating on the assumption—the _foundation_ —that when the worst things happened, he had backup in place. And even in this different place, that had turned out to be true. "Look, maybe you could borrow a couple of my friends, Marissa and Chuck. Or the versions that are in this universe. You might be surprised what they can do."

"The brokerage people? They know about the paper?"

"Marissa even believes it. You won't have to break the ice with them."

"I can't trust a couple of strangers. I barely even trust you."

He let out a half laugh. He wasn't sure he'd trust himself in her place. "I'm just saying you should give them a chance. Meet them, see if you can work with them."

"Like a test drive?"

Wasn't that what tonight had been? "Kind of. I can introduce you tomorrow."

"I don't know." 

He fought the urge to push harder for Chuck and Marissa's involvement. If he really wanted her trust, he needed to show her it went both ways. "It's up to you, of course. The paper is your responsibility."

"Yeah, well, it was Evan's first, and look how that turned out. He passed it on to me, and he wasn't exactly the king of great decisions."

"If that paper keeps coming to you and Cat sticks around, you must be the right person."

She let out a groan and dropped her had on top of Lexie's. "What are you, Jiminy Cricket?" She sounded exhausted, her voice muffled through Lexie's curls.

"Look, we're both tired. Why don't you go home, get some sleep, and when the paper comes tomorrow—"

"Today," Tess corrected him, nodding at the clock over the counter. It was after three. She sat and stretched her legs along the length of the booth, with Lexie still curled on her chest. "I'm going to sleep here. Won't be the first time, and I have to open in a couple hours anyway."

Gary got up and turned out the lights, stretched his own legs along the opposite bench. Chuck was going to yell at him either way. Might as well put off the scolding as long as he could. 

As he drifted off, a thought occurred to him and slipped out, an unplanned whisper in the dark. "Did you ever think about giving Lexie up for adoption? Not now, but back when you found out you were having her?" After a moment in which he was pretty sure they both stopped breathing, he added, "Sorry, that's none of my business."

"It's not." Tess's whisper was hoarse. "But yeah, I did. Rick wanted me to. So did our parents. But I kept thinking beyond the future they said I was giving up, to the future I could have with her. She's my responsibility. I couldn't leave that to anyone else."

"Like the paper."

After a long, still moment, Tess said, "Yeah. Like the paper. And the people in it."

He closed his eyes and saw the parade that so often accompanied his dreams. "Them, too."

* * * * * 


	28. Chapter 28

_When you're standing at the crossroads_   
_Don't know which path to choose_   
_Let me come along_   
_'Cause even if you're wrong_   
_I'll stand by you_   
_~Christina Hynde and Billy Steinberg_

 

* * *

Gary woke from a dream about diving into the world's biggest breakfast buffet to a sharp retort from a newly familiar voice. "It's not like I haven't done it before!"

"She's a _baby_ , Tess." The second voice was gravel rough. "She needs a crib, and a quilt, and a teddy bear, not a couple of napkins and a salt shaker. Who the hell is he, anyway?" The bench where Gary lay trying to determine whether or not he was dreaming shook. "This guy's old enough to be your uncle or something!" 

Opening his eyes, Gary found a spatula pointed at his nose. "Stan, I presume?"

"You sure as hell do presume, buddy." The bald head on the other side of the spatula looked nearly as greasy as the hash browns Gary'd eaten the other day. "Do you know how old she is? What the hell did you do to her?"

"Stan!" Tess shouted from just behind him. Lexie let out a sharp cry. "Cut it out. He's a friend."

"A friend, huh? Did your friend give you those cuts and bruises?" Stan kept his dubious dark eyes focused on Gary, but he moved just far enough away to give him room to sit up.

"He's the reason I survived the guy who did," Tess shot back. "Now go make up a bottle for Lex before you embarrass yourself."

"Was it that no-good boyfriend?" Stan asked as he backed into the kitchen, still holding the spatula like a weapon. "'Cause I'd be happy to have a chat with his Ivy League ass about how to treat the mother of his child."

" _Ex _-boyfriend. As if he'd show up around here." Tess looked at Gary, biting her lip for a minute, then held out the baby. "Feed her, would you? We have a diner to open."__

__"Uh, sure." Gary took Lexie in his arms. She blinked up at him in sleepy confusion. He lowered his voice and asked Tess, "Did it come yet?"_ _

__"Not now," she breathed, and went to work making coffee._ _

__While Stan assembled the bottle, Gary used the phone behind the counter to make a quick call to let Marissa know where he was. He asked her to call Chuck, knowing full well it was a coward's move. He was oddly disappointed when she didn't call him on it, the way the Marissa he knew would have. When he hung up, Stan handed him the warm bottle with a sharp grunt, and Gary took Lexie and her bottle to the back booth. Stan watched him from the pass-through window while he pretended to stock the kitchen._ _

__Gary wasn't exactly sure how to feed a baby, but when he put the bottle to her lips Lexie stared up at him with big brown eyes and sucked down the formula like a trooper. Her little forehead was creased like the wrinkled shirt Gary had been wearing for the past couple days. He watched her and her mom, thinking about what Tess had said, what they both had said, the night before. Tess was right. She had a lot of responsibilities already, and this kid needed her mom to be there. Maybe he _was _supposed to stay and run back-up for her with the paper.___ _

____Just as the first few customers settled into their breakfasts, Chuck blew into the diner like a hurricane and marched up to Gary's table. "Where the hell have you been all night?"_ _ _ _

____"I was right here."_ _ _ _

____"You could have called."_ _ _ _

____"And interrupt your beauty sleep?" Gary got up to help Marissa, who'd stopped just inside the front door, tentatively sweeping her cane in an arc to find a path. Lexie let out several squeaks of protest at the interruption of her meal while Gary told Marissa, "This way. To your left and forward," and guided her to the booth._ _ _ _

____"You're babysitting?" Chuck asked pointedly._ _ _ _

____"We need to talk. Would you make room?" Chuck slid over to let Marissa into the booth, and Gary sat down across from them. "There you go, kiddo," he added to Lexie when he stuck the bottle back into her mouth._ _ _ _

____"House specialty." Tess plopped a plate full of cinnamon rolls on their table along with a pot of coffee and a collection of mugs: Josie and the Pussycats, Daffy Duck, and a cartoon version of the Beatles. "Is Lex okay? I'll take her as soon as I don't need both hands."_ _ _ _

____"No rush," he told her. "We'll take care of her."_ _ _ _

____" _You_ will take care of her," Chuck said. "I am not included in that offer."_ _ _ _

____"This is Chuck," Gary went on, not even trying to hide a roll of his eyes. "And Marissa." He realized he'd made an assumption that he probably shouldn't have. "What about you, Marissa? You included in this babysitting gig?"_ _ _ _

____She shrugged. "If you need me." But there was a tiny furrow across the bridge of her nose._ _ _ _

____Tess looked from Marissa to Gary, eyebrows raised. "You're the only one I—" She hesitated, and Gary wondered if she was about to say "trust," but she finished, "The only one I know. So you're in charge of Lex. It's on you if anything happens to her. Keep her happy. I can't lose this job."_ _ _ _

____Based on the eagle eye Stan kept on the baby, even with the diner full of customers, Gary was pretty sure Tess's job was safe for the foreseeable future. But he nodded and bounced Lex a little, trying to raise a smile from her or her mother. "Got it."_ _ _ _

____While Chuck attacked the cinnamon rolls, Gary filled him and Marissa in on what had happened the night before and, more important, on what he'd learned about Tess. "A month in and she's figured out a few things I still haven't," he finished under his breath. "I'm telling you guys, she's the real deal. If we help her, it'll stick." She wasn't Evan Cooper, and she wasn't going to turn into Nate Hill if Gary had anything to say about it. "Now I just need to get her to tell me what's in the paper today. Or better yet, give me a look at it. That way we can prove we're able to help."_ _ _ _

____"You must have some kind of death wish," Chuck muttered. "I can't think of any other reason you want to be around this magic newspaper, especially since you say you don't gamble with it."_ _ _ _

____"At least he's letting you eat today," Marissa said mildly. "Be sure you order a big breakfast. I don't want to listen to your stomach grumbling for the next twelve hours."_ _ _ _

____"If some people would prioritize basic needs none of us would have to listen to it."_ _ _ _

____Lexie, who'd just finished her bottle, responded to Chuck's grousing with a squeak. Tess came over to see if she was okay and take their orders; Gary stuck his knee out into the aisle so he could perch Lexie on it and bounce her around, since, as Tess had said the night before, she seemed to want to be moving the whole time she was awake._ _ _ _

____"What about the paper?" he asked after Tess had taken Chuck and Marissa's orders and turned to him._ _ _ _

____She rolled her eyes. "You want your eggs scrambled, like the other day, right? Toast or hash browns?"_ _ _ _

____"I can check the stories while you work, make us a plan for the day."_ _ _ _

____"I told you what Evan said about sharing it. I'm _coming_ ," she added in response to Stan's second, "Order up!"_ _ _ _

____"I'm not just anybody," Gary said._ _ _ _

____Tess jerked her pencil at Chuck. "He is." She hustled off to put in their orders and deliver food to the other diners._ _ _ _

____"No offense taken!" Chuck called after her. "Sheesh, why does every woman who likes you think I'm some kind of jerk?"_ _ _ _

____"Oh, you're not just any jerk," Marissa assured him with a grin. "You're a very special jerk."_ _ _ _

____"Thanks a lot." Chuck drowned his sorrows with a swig from the Daffy Duck mug and stuffed another cinnamon roll in his mouth._ _ _ _

____"She sounds like a good waitress," Marissa said. Watching Tess go from table to table, Gary had to agree. She knew the regulars and their orders and seemed to have calibrated exactly how much chit-chat each of them wanted. She handled the hung-over twentysomethings, the cranky businessmen and women, and the old guys meeting for coffee with a deft touch. He'd have hired her at McGinty's in a heartbeat._ _ _ _

____Stan reminded Gary a little of Crumb, though his coffee wasn't nearly as thick. He gave Tess guff with every plate he handed through the window, and yet his fierce scowl whenever he got a look at her face, the puffy scars and mottled bruises, was incredibly familiar. He kept darting looks over at Gary and his friends, too, making sure they were taking good care of the baby. When he called out the order for their table, he was at the end of the pass-through closest to their booth, and Gary couldn't help but overhear what he said when he caught Tess's wrist mid-grab for the plates. "Hey. You got a kid, you got classes." Stan tugged at her wrist until she met his eyes. "You got this job, at least for now. Whatever it is they're selling, you don't need something else on your plate."_ _ _ _

____Tess quirked a grin and pulled her wrist free. "You're right. I am really busy these days. Maybe I should quit."_ _ _ _

____"You won't find a job this flexible anywhere in this city," Stan sputtered. "What are you going to do when I retire?"_ _ _ _

____"Gee, I don't know, Stan. You've been threatening to retire since I started coming here with my dad when I first got teeth, so I figure I have time to work it out."_ _ _ _

____"I got plans, you know. Gonna cruise to Alaska, Chile, and Greece. Fish the Seven Seas."_ _ _ _

____"Ha." Tess loaded the plates onto her arm. "They're going to bury you under that grill."_ _ _ _

____"And I'll come back and haunt whoever buys the place if they try to fire you."_ _ _ _

____She flashed Stan a lopsided grin, then brought their plates and slid into the booth next to Gary. He handed Lexie over with just a little twinge of regret. In return, Tess wordlessly pulled the paper from the big pocket in front of her apron and slid it his way, albeit under the table. Right on schedule, Cat leapt stealthily onto the seat, squeezing in between Gary and the wall. "Just you, though," Tess said. "There's something in about an hour."_ _ _ _

____"What about the Cubs game?" Chuck stage whispered. Gary shot him a grimace and kept the paper on his lap so Chuck couldn't read it across the table._ _ _ _

____"He's a good guy," he told Tess, "but if I give him the paper he'll probably send the market down in flames. You nearly did, once," he added at Chuck's guffaw. "Nothing for you in here, not until she okays it."_ _ _ _

____"Which will be never." Tess took the baby and went to clear plates off the counter, balancing Lexie on her hip._ _ _ _

____"Why does she get to be the general?" Chuck asked._ _ _ _

____"Because it's her paper," Marissa said._ _ _ _

____"And we're here to help," Gary added. "Really help, not just bug her for baseball scores."_ _ _ _

____"She's a _kid _. You know, for a guy I wasn't talking to a few days ago, you sure have a way of pulling me into some harebrained stuff." Chuck stabbed a sausage and shoved half of it into his mouth. "You could at least let me see the headlines or the date," he mumbled around the meat. "How else do I know you've been telling the truth all this time?"___ _ _ _

______Gary glanced in the direction of the diner's kitchen, where Tess was arguing with Stan about a plate of cold eggs benedict. Lexie bounced happily in Tess's hold, slapping her mother's back with her tiny hands._ _ _ _ _ _

______Gary flashed the paper at Chuck, folding the top so he could see the date but not much else. "Satisfied?"_ _ _ _ _ _

______"It's tomorrow's," Chuck told Marissa. "At least it says it is. Maybe he's for real."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Of course he is. We shouldn't have doubted you, Gary."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Oh, yeah, you should have. It sounds impossible, especially after what happened to you. I get that."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"But it doesn't feel impossible," she said with a lift of her shoulders and an expression that was almost happy._ _ _ _ _ _

______"Speak for yourself," Chuck told her._ _ _ _ _ _

______"Eat your eggs, Doubting Thomas."_ _ _ _ _ _

______The three of them dug into breakfast in relative silence. Gary quickly read the story on the page Tess had folded down. A man was going to have a heart attack near a northside bus stop. As crises went, it would be relatively easy to handle. He downed his eggs and watched Tess maneuver the diner, its patrons, and her boss. He knew she was exhausted and scared after yesterday, but she flashed smiles at her customers, let the old ladies tickle the baby's toes, and genuinely seemed to like interacting with people. He could see why Evan Cooper, for all his apparent faults, had landed on her as a good recipient for the paper. Was that how it worked? Would he get to pick a time to quit, and choose who came next?_ _ _ _ _ _

______Maybe, if he ever got home. Everything depended on that._ _ _ _ _ _

______He flipped through the rest of the paper. There were several minor incidents in the morning, things Tess might have had to triage otherwise, that he was sure he could help with. A pair of more serious stories right around lunchtime would be easier if they split up to handle them. "It's almost like you knew I'd be here and she'd be ready for help," he muttered under his breath to Cat, who was lying low in the corner of the bench. Cat nuzzled his arm._ _ _ _ _ _

______"I'm going to see if I can get off early and take care of that thing up in Lincoln Park," Tess said when she stopped by to top off their coffees. "Anything else you guys want?"_ _ _ _ _ _

______"I'm going with you." Gary handed her a couple of twenties, part of the stash Marcia had given him—had it only been the day before? "What?" he asked at Chuck's raised eyebrow. "I believe in tipping well."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"So did the last guy," Tess muttered as she marched off to the kitchen._ _ _ _ _ _

______"I need you here," Gary heard Stan say in response to her request to leave early._ _ _ _ _ _

______"I have class, and I didn't get a chance to study last night. Breakfast is winding down. Pam can handle the floor until the lunch rush."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"When you won't be here."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Karen will be."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"She's getting tired of picking up your slack. Besides, she only comes in because she wants to coo at that baby of yours."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"I will be back for the dinner rush after class."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"And I will be here the entire time, wondering what the heck kind of trouble you're getting into. What about little Miss Lex, huh?" He chucked the baby under her chin as she reached for his spatula with a delighted gurgle._ _ _ _ _ _

______"Mom's going to take her. Thanks, Stan!" Tess called as she whipped off her apron and hurried over to unfold the stroller and strap Lexie into it. Gary followed her out the door; Chuck and Marissa were right on his heels._ _ _ _ _ _

______"It's just a heart attack," Tess said when they were clear of the diner. "You don't need to be here. Go figure out how to transmigrate yourself back home."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"I think I've figured out how to get home, and it involves being with you," Gary said. "Besides, you do need help, whether you'll admit it or not. You need to get to Lincoln Park right now, which means you're taking the baby with you, unless your mom's place is on the way. Who's watching Lexie while you perform CPR?"_ _ _ _ _ _

______"She'll be fine in the stroller." But as they stopped at the crosswalk for a red light, Tess looked dubiously up and down the street._ _ _ _ _ _

______Gary stepped in front of the stroller, forcing her to look at him. "It's better to do CPR as a team than solo."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"I can handle it. I always do."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"You have, sure, but for what? A few weeks? You're doing great, but today is different. Today, we will be there. All of us, helping with the baby and the paper."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Yeah, 'cause none of us need to be at work or anything," Chuck muttered._ _ _ _ _ _

______"You have two weeks' vacation," Marissa pointed out._ _ _ _ _ _

______"Which I was going to use to go to Jamaica with Trisha."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Trisha? Mr. James's assistant? She's engaged, Chuck. To Mr. James's son!"_ _ _ _ _ _

______Chuck shrugged. "Maybe I'll ask Cindy."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"What happens when you all have to go back to work?" Tess half-drooped over the handles of the stroller. "Or back to wherever you're really from? I'll be dragging a baby, and then a toddler, all over the city, putting her in danger, and if I can't tell people what I'm doing and why, she will."_ _ _ _ _ _

______The light changed. Other pedestrians flowed around them, squinting in the low morning sun. Gary refused to move. "I'm here to change all that. This isn't too good to be true. I'm here because whoever or whatever sends the paper doesn't want you to go it alone, and neither do I. Neither do any of us." He silenced whatever retort Chuck was about to throw into the mix with a narrow glare._ _ _ _ _ _

______"Maybe it's not such a bad thing for Lexie to know right from the start that her mom's a hero," Marissa added._ _ _ _ _ _

______"I know how the paper works," Gary told Tess. "Chuck and Marissa here, they know a little bit, and if they're anything like the other Chuck and Marissa, the ones I know, they're going to be able to help you."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"On weekends," Chuck said, "and weeknights after six. Except Thursdays. That's poker night. Ow!" He reached down to rub his shin, glaring at Marissa's cane._ _ _ _ _ _

______"Great," Tess said. "I mean, really, it's sweet of you to want to work me into your schedule. I have to go." She took a step back so she could maneuver the stroller around Gary. "Duty calls and all that."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"It's calling all of us." Gary jogged into the crosswalk to catch up with her._ _ _ _ _ _

______"All of you?" She cast a glance back at the curb, where Marissa was shaking off Chuck's attempt to grab her arm._ _ _ _ _ _

______"All of us."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Your friends are nice enough—Marissa is, anyway—but the last thing I need is a parade."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Chuck may be an ass, but he has a car," Marissa said as they caught up with Tess and Gary. "Wouldn't that help with all the things you have to take care of today?"_ _ _ _ _ _

______Chuck held out a hand as if to stop the tide, but Gary pushed past him, already scanning the street for the black SUV. He found it parked half a block away._ _ _ _ _ _

______"What just happened?" Chuck asked when they were all buckled in, the baby clutched protectively in Tess's arms._ _ _ _ _ _

______"You're helping," Gary told him. "Thank you for volunteering."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"Now wait a minute, I didn't—"_ _ _ _ _ _

______"You're going to need a car seat," Gary said._ _ _ _ _ _

______"My car has seats."_ _ _ _ _ _

______"For the baby." Marissa's faint smirk told Gary he was on the right track, needling Chuck into helping._ _ _ _ _ _

______"We need a whole lot more than that," Chuck said, mostly under his breath. "Starting with a reality check."_ _ _ _ _ _

______ _ _ _ _

________ _ _ _ _

* * * * * 

WOMAN INJURED IN FALL

HOT DOG SPILL BURNS VENDOR

FLAT TIRE CAUSES FIVE-CAR PILEUP 

WINDOW WASHER PLUNGES FROM SCAFFOLD

"Quite the laundry list," Gary muttered. He let the newspaper drop into his lap and watched a sun-soaked Chicago morning roll by. Even in the air conditioned car, the humidity crept in, promising a thunderstorm later. Perfect fishing weather, his dad would have said. He glanced down at the madras plaid shirt he'd thrown on that morning. It, and a handful of other shirts exactly like it except for their color combinations, were the only clean things left in the other guy's wardrobe. If he didn't get home soon, he was going to turn into Bernie Hobson once and for all.

"No rest for the weary." Chuck was far too chipper about this. If Gary hadn't been slightly numb from the painkiller he'd taken earlier, he would have thought about hitting him again. Not that he would have done it, but he would have thought about it.

"At least they're easier to deal with than yesterday's stories," Marissa offered from the backseat.

"Yeah, well, yesterday morning we didn't know yesterday would be yesterday, did we?" Chuck asked.

Gary wasn't sure what Marissa had said to convince Chuck to bring her along this morning, but he was relieved she was there. He was the one they should have left at home. He wasn't sure he could handle even the simplest situations on his own, but they'd made it very clear, Chuck and Marissa, that even though he still was in pain and a little loopy from the pills, it was going to be his job to save the day. Again. 

"Today's different," Marissa said. Gary grunted. "It is," she insisted. "Today we're together. We'll get you home, _and _take care of the paper."__

__"This is it, right?" Chuck asked as he stopped at a light. "Webster and Bissell?"_ _

__"Oh, yeah, uh…" Gary squinted at the newspaper. "'Thirty-two year old Rebecca Sampson caught her heel in a ventilation grate and fell into the street near a CTA bus stop.' She hits her head and has a severe concussion."_ _

__"She must be really out of it if she lets them publish her age," Chuck said._ _

__"What makes you say that?"_ _

__"Women—women in this part of Chicago," he added at Marissa's yelp. "They can be, you know, worried about stuff like that. Superficial," he added with a wink at Gary._ _

__"If men didn't lust after women who are far too young for them, maybe women wouldn't be so worried about their ages," Marissa snapped. Chuck looked inordinately proud of himself. He liked this barbed banter, Gary realized. He couldn't really tell if Marissa felt the same way._ _

__They crawled past the bus stop where the woman was supposed to fall. There was a lot of traffic, both vehicles and pedestrians, and nowhere to stop. Chuck parked a couple blocks away on a side street, and Gary propelled himself into the heat and damp._ _

__"Don't worry, Gary," Marissa said when he let out a grunt. "Today is going to be better. For starters, you have me to remind you to bring the paper with you."_ _

__Chuck rolled his eyes at Gary as he handed him the _Sun-Times _over the roof of the car. Gary helped Marissa out, and they started back to the intersection together. They got a lot of odd looks, but then, they made an odd trio. Quartet, if he counted the dog. Most of the gogglers gave Spike a wide enough berth that Gary and Chuck could follow Marissa in his wake.___ _

____"Let's save this woman and get out of here." Chuck faked an elaborate shudder. "This place makes me nervous. It's like a downscale Rodeo Drive."_ _ _ _

____Gary was happy to get it done ASAP, but he knew there was a long list ahead of him of similar tasks. He squinted into the sunlight bouncing off the glass walls of the bus stop. "Doesn't it ever end?"_ _ _ _

____"Every night," Marissa said, "at the end of the news cycle."_ _ _ _

____"But it starts all over again the next day." The next glaring, noisy day. He'd gone looking for sunglasses before they left, but the only remotely useful thing in the other guy's junk drawer had been a Swiss army knife._ _ _ _

____"Yup. Gotta get back on the merry-go-round, buddy." Chuck slapped him on the "just a graze" shoulder, and sparks showered at the edges of Gary's vision._ _ _ _

____"Son of a bitch."_ _ _ _

____"We don't have time to talk about my parentage right now." Chuck poked at the newspaper. "We have a life to save."_ _ _ _

____Gary winced against a headache that was only made worse by the jiggling newsprint. In his world, this neighborhood was usually safe during the day, but not after dark. Here the row houses were freshly landscaped and had new windows; several had been turned into shops full of handmade paper, polka dotted ribbons, and gourmet hot chocolate that cost more than he'd pay for a gin and tonic at a Gold Coast hotel. So of course there were lots of women, the kind who didn't need jobs and spent their time shopping in high fashion and high heels._ _ _ _

____High heels that didn't mix well with jostling crowds, sewer grates, and oncoming buses._ _ _ _

____"Do you see her?" Marissa asked._ _ _ _

____"There's no picture with the story. Rebecca Sampson could be any one of these ladies." He lowered his voice. Some of the women were shooting him interested looks. "They all kind of look alike to me."_ _ _ _

____"Me too," Marissa said with a twisted grin which disappeared as quickly as it had shown up. "You have to find the one who's going to fall and be hurt."_ _ _ _

____"Pancaked," Chuck finished helpfully. "Blotto. Flat Stanleyed. Or flat Trixied."_ _ _ _

____"What the hell is a Trixie?"_ _ _ _

____Chuck spread his arms wide, indicating the chattering women. "Take your pick."_ _ _ _

____"We're at the right corner," Gary said, though he leaned out over the curb to check the street signs, just in case. "Guess we wait and see."_ _ _ _

____ _ _

______ _ _

* * * * *

As they drove toward Lincoln Park, Tess warmed up to Marissa. Marissa had a couple nieces and nephews, and she knew what questions to ask about the baby, stuff about sleeping and eating and sitting up, which seemed to be the extent of Lexie's repertoire.

Somewhere in the back of his head, behind the plan he'd been formulating since he'd gotten a good look at Tess's paper, Gary could hear Marissa asking him why it was so much easier to see a way clear to help Tess when he could hardly bear to ask for help for himself. Once they were back in the same place, they'd probably have another talk about his responsibilities and her ability to help with them. He figured he owed her that. He wondered again if she knew what was happening, and if the paper was still coming to McGinty's back home.

Whenever Chuck dropped one of his loaded questions about the paper, Tess flashed a frown at Gary. He should have known this would be an issue; she was skittish to begin with and Chuck was…well, he was eager. He probably reminded Tess of Evan Cooper. He'd have to find a way to show her—and Chuck—that Chuck wasn't as single-minded as he seemed.

The neighborhood they ended up in was a mile or so north of the Newberry. Where Gary came from, it was in the process of gentrification, but here it was still lower middle class, like the diner. Groups waited for the bus; Gary noticed a lot more people with cell phones. Like the ones he'd seen Chuck and Marissa use here, they were smaller models than most people seemed to have back home. If that was the direction those things were going, it was just as well he steered clear of them.

He lengthened his stride to keep up with Tess, who used Lexie's stroller to open a path through the morning crowds lined up at a coffee wagon and waiting at the bus stop. Chuck and Marissa trailed behind them, and when Tess stopped on the far edge of the crowd, the four of them huddled up. "Page seven." Tess opened the paper, already scanning the crowd. "Guy's going to have a—"

"Heart attack," Gary re-read over her shoulder. Chuck tried to angle in too, but Gary blocked his line of sight and ignored his disgusted grunt. The story didn't give much to go on, as usual. There was no photo of the victim, and his name was being withheld pending notification of relatives. "The ambulance is held up by morning traffic. I guess no one in this crowd knows CPR?"

"Or no one notices when he goes down," Tess said. "That's Chicago for you."

"It doesn't need to be," Marissa said. There was a note in her voice Gary recognized: the sound of Marissa coming up with a big idea. 

"Isn't forty-five kind of young for a heart attack?" Chuck asked.

"Never know," Gary said. 

"I guess we do now," Chuck said.

"Why is this in the paper, though?" Tess muttered, scanning the crowd while she buckled Lexie into the stroller. "There are so many worse things going on in this city all the time."

"Sometimes it's a chain reaction," Gary said. "Maybe he's a firefighter who's going to save someone in a couple weeks. Even if that's not it, would you rather handle worse all by yourself?"

"Of course not."

"So let's find him."

"Okay, come on," Tess muttered, mostly to herself. "Where is he?" 

Gary noticed her white-knuckled grip on Lexie's stroller. He knocked his elbow against hers. "Chuck can hold on to that." Tess bit her lip, but Gary said, "All he has to do is hold the handles, and we'll be able to do CPR without worrying about Lexie." 

"Me?" Chuck said when Tess turned the stroller toward him. He took a step back. "Oh, no, I am not your guy, not for this."

"You said you'd help," Gary reminded him. "Would you rather do the rescue breathing?"

"Maybe Marissa should do it," Tess said.

"Oh, sure, trust the blind woman over me."

"You absolutely should," Gary told Tess, even though the dubious look on Marissa's face confirmed his suspicion that she might have trouble with her cane and the stroller both. He scanned the crowd again, still trying to find the heart attack victim, while Tess handed off the stroller to Chuck. "It has to be one of the guys at the bus stop."

Tess nodded and headed that way.

"What's she going to do?" Chuck demanded. "Ask which of them has buildup in their arteries?"

"What _we _are going to do, is save his—"__

__"Gary?"_ _

__Gary froze at the voice, which sent the hairs on the back of his neck straight up. "Marcia?" he whispered. Chuck mouthed it along with him, shaking his head. She stepped into Gary's line of vision, dressed for court in a power suit and a perfectly twisted hairdo. Given the fierce look on her face, there was no question who was on trial. "What are you doing here?" he managed._ _

__"Meeting a client." She tilted her head to one side. "I didn't realize there was a fishing hole in this part of town." Her voice was sarcastic, but her expression was hurt._ _

__"Marcia, I—" He was interrupted by shouts. They all turned toward the bus stop, where a man lay on the sidewalk, his briefcase open and papers fluttering out among a widening circle of onlookers._ _

__Tess's shout cut through his stammering shock. "Someone call nine-one-one! Gary, get over here!"_ _

__"What in the world is happening?" Marcia asked._ _

__But Gary was already sprinting for the bus stop, where he dropped to his knees and started compressions at Tess's nod. He counted and compressed, sat back while Tess breathed, then counted and compressed again, his arms locked straight. Even as he heard the weird sound of ribs creaking under his hand and registered the grey tinge in the guy's skin, he was aware of Marcia, a Marcia he didn't know and hadn't married, waiting for answers he'd never be able to give._ _

__

____

* * * * *

The sun stabbed Gary's eyes. He squinted as he tried to find a woman tottering on heels.

"I hear a bus a block or so away," Marissa said. "Gary, do you see her?"

"Wouldn't know her if I did," he groused.

"You don't have to know her. Just be there when it happens." She tugged her dog close to her side.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Even as he questioned her, Gary moved to the grate-covered opening next to the bus. If he stood on it, the woman, whoever she was, would have to walk around it, her heel wouldn't catch, and she wouldn't fall. Maybe he was getting the hang of this magic newspaper after all. 

"Careful," he warned Marissa when she tried to follow him. The heels on her shoes were too chunky to fit through the slats, but he didn't want to take any chances. "You get clear and I'll block the grate. Ought to solve the problem." He nudged her in a safer direction. She rolled her eyes but let him, tugging Spike to stand closer to Chuck, who was blatantly checking out the asses of the women in sundresses and shorts milling around the bus stop. A group of half a dozen women walked toward Gary, talking with their hands, charm bracelets and bangles jangling. "Morning, ladies," he said, smooth as silk, and stood where they'd have to swerve around him and the grate.

"Good morning," said one. Gary noted her thin, spiky heels as she did a double take and stopped dead in her tracks. One of her friends ran into her, and her coffee cup went sailing out of her hand, over the first woman's head. The lid popped off in midair and the contents of the cup spattered onto Gary's shirt. It wasn't hot enough to burn, but he winced when the cup bounced off his wounded shoulder.

"Oh, sweetie!"

The entire gang surrounded Gary, pulling stain wipes and stain sticks and stain powder puffs out of their jeweled purses. Before he knew it they all had their hands on him, trying to take care of his shirt. Someone jostled right into his shoulder with a jolt that cut through the painkillers' numbness and knocked him toward the curb. When he recovered and opened his eyes, a patch of light a few yards away had gone silver. Just like the day before. He took a half-step toward it, but the women were still fussing over him, blocking his way.

"Really, it's okay," he told them. "It's just coffee." 

"Every single time." He looked past the women to see Chuck, arms folded over his chest, shaking his head. At his side, Marissa's dog let out a staccato bark.

"I'm fine, ladies," Gary insisted. 

And he was, but the light held him captive for another moment, almost as if it wanted something, as if it was calling him. He sidled past a few of the women and crouched, stretching out his hand to see what it felt like, if it would be safe to go into it. Instead, he touched fur. 

"Ugh!" He yanked his hand away from the cat, who yowled insistently as the light swirled away from them. Gary stood up again, trying to evade the women's grasping hands and follow the light, but the ground under his feet heaved as though it had turned into a liquid wave.

A few hands grabbed his arm. "Whoa, steady there, honey," someone trilled, but it was another shout that got Gary's attention.

"Spike?" Marissa had been pushed away from Chuck and her dog by the crowd. She said something else, but it was lost in the roar of the bus leaving its stop. Gary squinted. The air around her looked thicker, shimmering with the same silvery light he'd been trying to grasp. As the bus passed Gary's group, everything slowed down: the hands, the voices, and especially Marissa, who swayed on the edge of the curb and tumbled backward into the busy street. 

He broke free of the coffee stain crew, too late to catch her.

* * * * *


	29. Chapter 29

_As Oxford philosopher Michael Lockwood put it, "We cannot look sideways, through the multiverse, any more than we can look into the future."_  
_~Marcus Chown_

 

* * *

 

Gary wasn't sure the CPR was working. Twice Tess interrupted rescue breathing to check for a pulse and shook her head. The man's fingertips turned blue. Gary kept going, ignoring the papers wafting out of the briefcase and into the street and the crowd around them, none of whom stepped in to offer help. 

Thanks to Marissa's phone call, a rescue squad showed up about five minutes later. The EMTs slipped in with fresh arms and their equipment, nudging Gary out of the way so they could get a gurney in place. He sat back on the curb and tried to catch his breath. CPR was always more taxing than he thought it was going to be, and he hadn't counted on his torso still aching from the beating he'd taken the day before. 

"Good job, you two. He'll make it to the hospital at least." One of the EMTs came over and held out a hand to help Gary stagger to his feet. "You okay?" he asked when Gary couldn't keep in a grunt.

"Yeah," Gary managed. "Got a couple bruised ribs from something else." 

The EMT frowned at him, then at Tess's battered face. "Is this the kind of something else we should know about?" he asked Tess.

"We saved the guy's life, right? We can go?" There was an edge to her voice that deepened the EMT's frown, but before he could ask any more questions, his partner called him over to help load the heart attack victim onto the gurney. 

"Good job," Gary echoed, patting Tess on the shoulder. She looked like she wanted to snap at him, too, but Marcia pushed her way between them.

"Gary." Her fingers were tense around the handle of her briefcase. "What in the world is going on?" 

He took a deep breath. This relationship wasn't his to blow up, however disoriented he might feel about it. "Marcia, I swear, whatever you think right now, I guarantee you, you're wrong." Which wasn't the best thing he could have lead with. Marcia hated being told she was wrong. 

Her neck and cheeks flushed. "So you didn't lie about going fishing? Because that's what I'm thinking right now, that you lied to me." 

The ground beneath them heaved, and she swayed into Gary. He caught her elbows, but she shook herself free.

"You felt that, right?" He turned to ask Tess. Dr. Stinton's words echoed around his head. _Bleedthrough. Scar tissue._

"What the hell is going on?" Marcia demanded over the sound of a barking dog that was oddly familiar. Gary turned to see where the dog was, where _Spike_ was, then nearly doubled over when Tess's elbow hit him square in the ribs. She pointed toward the corner with the paper. A few yards from them the crowd that had gathered to watch the EMTs had forced Marissa to the curb, and the ground gave another shake. He could see what would happen, almost as if he'd read the story in the paper. She teetered backward, about to fall into the path of an oncoming bus. He leapt toward her before he could imagine the rest. 

Marissa pitched back, arms spiraling. Gary nearly misjudged the angle; it was as if the air thickened around him and made it hard to move. But he managed to slide in and catch her from behind, then propel them both away from the street as the bus whooshed past and the sidewalk cracked. Her hands wrapped around his wrists as he fought to steady them both.

The crowd that had started to disperse once the EMTs left turned its attention to Gary again, pressing in with morbid curiosity. 

"Marissa, you okay? Give her some room." He was about to turn her around, to see for himself if she was hurt, when movement on the periphery of the crowd caught his eye. A few yards away, Chuck stood gaping at him, holding onto the stroller.

Marissa stood right next to Chuck. 

She wore the same blue shirt she'd been wearing all morning, instead of the yellow one worn by the woman gripping his arms. In the same instant, Gary caught a whiff of home: McGinty's and coffee and a dog. The same dog he'd heard barking right before he'd seen her fall.

She must have figured it out too, because her grip on his wrist tightened like a vise. "Gary?" 

He tried to hold on, but before he could answer she was gone, as if his realization that this was _Marissa_ , the Marissa he'd known for three years now, made her disappear. He stumbled forward onto the sidewalk. The air thinned again as it slammed him back into the Chicago that wasn't his, where Marcia was waiting, arms crossed and mouth twisted tight, for an explanation.

* * * * *

The crowd on the sidewalk plowed into Marissa as if it were a single organism, jostling her away from Spike and the curb. In that half-second of freefall—

Not freefall. It was something _pulling_ her, drawing her through thickened air that buzzed with a skin-tingling energy that threatened to rip her apart.

And then he caught her, just as the bus roared past. She knew who it was. Tried to hold on, said his name, caught a familiar scent, heard a familiar grunt. But in the moment it took her to catch her breath, he was gone.

Without Gary holding her up, the air pushed her again, forward this time, and she stumbled and righted herself as another bus whooshed by, enveloping her in diesel fumes.

Gary was suddenly in front of her, steadying her by grasping her elbows. But it wasn't _Gary_.

"I didn't see until it was too late. I don't know how you caught yourself, but thank God you did, I mean, that bus—" He faltered. "Marissa? You okay?"

He asked because she was shaking, gripping his arms tight and trying to catch her breath in the suddenly too thin, too sharp air. Trying not to burst into tears.

Questions and expressions of dismay launched from strangers hit her like tiny darts. She held onto Gary because he was the only thing she knew, until Chuck asked, "Hey guys, what happened?" He put a hand on her shoulder, and Spike whined at her side. "Give us some room, ladies."

The crowd around them backed off, no doubt because of Spike, and she crouched down to find the harness handle and reassure herself that Spike, at least, was real. Was himself. She gave him a tight hug before she was able to stand and find her voice. "I fell, or I was falling, and Gary caught me."

"I didn't," Gary said, a note of frustration in his voice. "I was too late." 

"No, I mean Gary, _our_ Gary. He was right behind me, Chuck. I tried to hold onto him. Did you see him?" She hoped this Gary wasn't offended by her emphasis; she didn't know how else to explain it.

"You got pushed away by the crowd. Couldn't see you for a second there," Chuck said. "There was another one of those earthquakes, like yesterday." He swallowed hard. "You're you, right? Not some other Marissa?"

"Of course I'm me. It was him, Chuck. He was right here. If he hadn't been, I would have been—I think I would have—"

Chuck made a hideous squishing sound. "Yeah, I get it. Gary? You see yourself?"

"I just saw the light. Same thing I saw in the office with Greer. I mean, I saw her—you, Marissa—start falling and jumped, but I knew I'd get there too late. It all happened too fast."

"Too fast," Marissa whispered, and Chuck squeezed her shoulder. It was real. Gary was real. He'd come out of the hostage situation, or whatever had happened in that other reality, alive. If he hadn't, she would have been killed and _damn_ it, she couldn't stop shaking or catch a normal breath. Her foot hit a gap that seemed bigger than normal. "What's this?"

"Crack in the sidewalk," Gary said. 

"Pretty sure that's new," Chuck added, then raised his voice as he propelled her forward. "Coming through, ladies, 'scuse me, thanks."

Somewhere in the crowd, Marissa heard a woman ask if they should call the police to report the earthquake.

"Is there anywhere we could sit down?" she asked.

"Let's head back to the car," Chuck said.

Spike stuck close as she followed Chuck's guiding voice through the crowd of strangers resuming their day. She couldn't let the wash of shaking and tears and anger overwhelm her. Gary—this Gary, who was not the one who'd caught her—would probably send her back to the bar if she gave into it. But she couldn't help stumbling; couldn't help but think it was because her feet wanted to go back, back to where he'd been, where they'd both been, for an instant that had been far, far too short.

"Hey, Marissa." Chuck bumped her shoulder with his own. "This is good news, okay? If it really was him, that means he's alive. Whatever happened yesterday, he got through it. And there's a connection between where he is and here. Some kind of bridge or something."

"A bridge," she echoed, reaching up to finger the familiar warmth of her St. Jude medal. "I had him, Chuck. I had him right in my hands."

"Seems to me like it was the other way around."

"Why couldn't he stay?"

"Why didn't I go back?" the other Gary asked, and he sounded peeved. "I saw it, you know. You were falling into this light, this glow. I saw it yesterday in the insurance office. I should have jumped into it."

Marissa gritted her teeth as a headache bloomed between her temples. "I think maybe right now the time isn't right. It felt so threatening. If you had jumped in, it might have ripped you apart. That's what I think it wanted to do to me." The pain stabbed at her head. "I think we'll know when it's supposed to happen."

"Maybe," Gary said dubiously.

"You're okay, though, Marissa, right?" Chuck asked.

"I don't know," she said honestly. If they sent her home, they sent her home. She'd fight it as long as she could, but she couldn't lie about the pain crushing her skull. "I need some aspirin. A _lot_ of aspirin."

"Pressure headache?" Gary asked. "Like you've come up too quick from the bottom of Lake Michigan?"

"Something like that."

"We should ask those scientists," he said. "Crumb's friends."

"I thought there were other stories we need to take care of," Chuck pointed out.

Gary shuffled pages of newspaper; the sound grated on her raw nerves. "Let's swing down to Buckingham Fountain and I'll tell the hot dog cart guy to secure his stand, and then we'll have a couple hours before the window washer falls. Gives us some time to figure out what this all means and what we should do next time this happens."

"Sounds good," she managed. Spike whined and pressed closer.

"It means he can get back here, okay?" Chuck said under his breath as they followed Gary back to the car. "Our guy's alive and in one piece. Still playing superhero. We're going to get him back."

She reached out, found his arm, and squeezed it. "Thanks, Chuck."

She felt, more than heard, his rueful laugh. "Of course, if we're getting along this well, he may not recognize us."

* * * * *

"Did you see her?"

"Who was that?" Marcia asked. "Gary, you have to tell me what's happening!"

"Marissa. She was just here, and then she—she—" She was gone. But for a second, she'd been there.

"Was that an earthquake? We don't have earthquakes in Chicago! Why do you have a bruise on your—have you been _fighting_?" Marcia touched his face; she might as well have thrown a glass of cold water on it. 

"Not exactly." He captured her fingers in his own, just wanting the world to hold still for a minute so he could figure out what the hell was going on.

"But you have been lying." She broke the contact with a snap of her wrist.

Gary looked away from Marcia's impatient confusion to be sure Marissa, the one in the blue shirt, was okay. She seemed to be listening to Chuck and Tess, who were both talking at the same time, Chuck gesturing wildly while Tess tucked Lexie's blanket back into the stroller.

Marcia followed his gaze to the little group. "What are you doing with Chuck? Whose baby is that? I know you want kids, Gary, but surely there's a better way to go about it than having an affair with a teenager!" 

"I'm not! She's not mine!" He remembered this, how Marcia got sarcastic and even mean when she was deeply hurt and upset. This time it was wholly his fault. "Look, there's a lot I can't tell you right now."

"Can't or won't?" She grabbed his arm and dragged him into the bus shelter, clearing everyone else out with a glare. There was a crack running through the glass surround that Gary was pretty sure hadn't been there before. "You're supposed to be fishing in Indiana," she said through her teeth, "and I find you here with Chuck, some teenager, a baby, and that blind woman."

"Marissa," he said before Marcia could say something they'd both regret. "Her name's Marissa, and she's my friend. They're all my friends. And nothing more. That young woman, who's over twenty-one by the way, and I were trying to help that man. You saw the CPR, right? We saved that guy's life."

Her glare eased just a bit, and she looked more like the Marcia he'd come to know here than the one he'd been married to. "That was great of you, really, but the way you went to it, it looked like you and that girl have worked together before. I don't understand."

"Neither do I," he admitted.

Marcia shifted her briefcase to her left hand. "You know, Gary, in the past when we've fought and I've accused you of not being honest, I meant that you weren't being honest with yourself about how you felt or what you wanted."

Gary winced. He remembered those fights. Or fights about the same thing.

"But now, you've actually lied to me. You've _been_ lying to me. For how long?"

"No. No, it's not like that." But he couldn't look her in the eye. He had lied. He was lying right now, standing there making her think he was the man she'd married.

"What is it like, Gary?" She waited with the barely controlled impatience that was her best cross-examination trick, but there was real uncertainty in her eyes, and that twist at the corner of her mouth that meant she was trying not to cry. This was the kind of sign he'd missed before. Dealing with the paper, he'd come to pay more attention to people; searching for clues to learn how to stop something, he'd learned to listen. Marcia was hurt, and it was his fault. "You owe me the truth."

He had no idea how to answer. He was used to keeping the paper a secret, and he'd been working on the assumption he needed to keep his real identity a secret from Marcia, but now that felt like cowardice. Maybe telling this woman the truth would keep her from throwing her real husband's suitcase out the window.

He took a deep breath. "Marcia, I promise, the last thing I want to do is hurt you. I'm out here helping people like that guy who collapsed. That's what I've been up to the past couple days." Or at least it was what he'd been trying to do.

"Don't you derail this conversation, Gary Hobson. Here's what you need to explain." She held up fingers as she listed items. "You lied to me about fishing. I don't know why, or where you've been for the past twenty-four hours. I just saw your receptionist, who was wearing a totally different outfit, fall into your arms and disappear. And now she's standing over there with Chuck and a young woman with a baby, who seems to be your friend, or maybe your partner in crime, even though I've never met her before. How do you explain all that?"

"I'm not sure." The only thing he was sure of was that it was the Marissa from his universe who'd nearly fallen. "The earthquakes and stuff, they've been following me around for a day or so. There's a lot of weird stuff happening." He tried to fix her with an earnest stare, but he kept being distracted by the passing crowds, by the sight of Tess trying to read the paper and her watch at the same time. She'd just worked a four-hour shift after only a few hours' sleep. And Lex was fussing again, her face screwed up and apple-red. "The point is, I found a way to help someone, and even with all the strange stuff going on, I like doing it." He almost always had. Surely that was true of the other version of himself. "Tess, the girl with the baby, has a huge responsibility. She's trying to cope, but she can't do it all alone."

Marcia looked over to the little group that kept drawing Gary's attention. "What responsibility?"

"It's a long story. But for the first time in a while, I'm making a choice, and that choice could wind up helping lots of people. It's what I've always wanted even when I didn't realize I wanted it." Which was true, even if a little mixed up and slanted. "I haven't been sure what to tell you, or how much, because I figured you'd react pretty much like this."

"I don't understand." It was a huge admission for Marcia. "But I might, if you'd trust me."

"I do trust you."

"Not as much as you trust Chuck, apparently." In her weary tone, he heard the echoes of the old arguments stirring. "That's really not your baby?"

"Of course not."

"Is it Chuck's?" 

"She's too cute to be Chuck's." 

Marcia looked at her watch. "Oh, God, I'm already so late I'm going to have to comp this client the first hour."

"Marcia." Gary touched her shoulder. "We can figure this out. You have to give me some time, but I'll explain everything, I swear."

"I listen to people swear to tell the truth every day." Her eyes narrowed. "I never thought I'd have to make _you_ take an oath."

"That's not fair."

"Look, Gary, this scares me. Right now you scare me." She blinked up at him, completely open for a moment, then squared her shoulders. "That, by the way, was me being honest. Go off with your friends and help people and find yourself. When you're ready to come home, I'll be there, but you'd better be prepared to be completely honest with me. No hiding behind Chuck and magic tricks." She shook her head. "I thought I knew you. I really did."

"You do. I will. I'll explain. I promise."

"I'll hold you to that." She turned on her heel and strode off.

He sank down on the bench, head in his hands. If they ever could get switched around right, some other guy was going to come home and expect everything to be fine, and he'd walk into a marriage that had turned into a hornet's nest thanks to him. It was too much for ten in the morning.

"Gary?"

"What? Oh, hey." He jumped up when he saw Marissa standing at the entrance to the bus shelter, tentatively tracing her cane along a crack that ran from the spot where he'd caught her all the way to his seat. She needed a dog, he thought, remembering the bark that had alerted him to the other Marissa's presence. He reached for her elbow, even though she wasn't wobbling. Maybe because he was. "Are you okay?"

"I'm not the one who fell. Chuck told me what happened, and I heard just now. Wasn't that your wife?"

"Not exactly mine, but yeah."

"I remember her voice from the phone at Strauss. She sounded pretty upset." 

"She is. I have to fix things." Gary sighed and sank back down on the bench. "I think the opening Marissa fell through could have been my way home. But I couldn't follow her. Something held me back. I think it was something in me. Maybe I didn't go home because I've messed up too much here."

"You want to know what I think?" Because she was Marissa, and some things held true in every dimension, she didn't wait for his answer. "However you came to be here, it was for a reason. A good reason. We needed you. I did, and Chuck, and Tess, and even Marcia. Based on what I heard, I don't think she's seen the person she's married to, or understood him, for a long time. So maybe that other Gary needed this, too, wherever he is. I think you're right about needing to help Tess, to help all of us, make Chicago a better place. I think that because you _are_ helping, you'll be able to go home when you're ready, and I have faith no one will be hurt in the process."

Gary blinked up at her. "That's what you think, huh?"

"I also think you need to talk to your—his—wife and straighten her out about a few things." She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head. "And finally, I think Tess is about to take off without us."

Gary studied her face. She wasn't the Marissa he'd known over the past few years, but she wanted to help. Hell, she needed to, to get her self-confidence back. If he'd gone home a few minutes ago, he'd have left that undone, among other things. A lot of other things, he thought, looking the way Marcia had gone. He stood and offered Marissa his elbow. "Right. Let's get over there and help her."

* * * * *


	30. Chapter 30

_You think I am being disruptive_  
_But no I'm running home, I'm running_  
_'Cause I'm trying to put the atom back together_  
_It's the Great Unknown._  
_~Dar Williams_

* * *

"Anybody want a hot dog?" Gary held up the box he'd been given as a thank-you after he'd helped the vendor secure his stand right before the wind gust hit the plaza around Buckingham Fountain. The resulting water spray had delighted a group of little kids in matching red t-shirts, who were now being chased around the fountain by their exasperated teachers. Weirdly, the lake-scented gusts seemed to be clearing Gary's head. "He gave me half a dozen."

Chuck wolfed one down almost as quickly as Gary registered him reaching into the box, but Marissa shook her head. The lines of consternation he'd grown used to were etched across her forehead, but for once he was pretty sure he wasn't the cause. She seemed to be listening for something through the rush of water and the traffic on Michigan Avenue.

"You okay?" he asked her.

"I don't know."

He waited, but she didn't elaborate, so he asked, "How about your dog?"

"I think he's fine."

"I meant does he want a hot dog?"

"Sure. No bun, though. It's okay, boy, you can take it," she added when Spike let out a soft whine, looking from her to the hot dog Gary held out to him. He ate it right from Gary's hand, and for once he didn't growl. Maybe they all really were becoming friends.

Gary watched the fountain for a minute, noting the way sunlight bounced off the water droplets. It created a sparkling, shimmering curtain of light around the food carts, tourists, and workers taking in the sunshine on their lunch breaks. It reminded him of the light he kept seeing, but this wasn't his doorway home.

As they headed back to the car, across the pedestrian bridge and down Michigan Avenue to Balbo, Chuck said, "This feels familiar, right Marissa?"

She nodded absently.

"What are you talking about?" Gary asked.

"You used to live here." Chuck pointed with the remains of his second hot dog at the entrance to the Blackstone Hotel, a shabby ghost of its former glory. "Not you, you, of course. But we used to come here every day when Gary first started getting the paper."

"Huh." Magic newspaper or not, there was no way he would have lived in a place like that. "I'm surprised he didn't end up with fleas."

Chuck made a sour face. "His cat did."

"No wonder Marcia never took him back."<

"Don't start with the Marcia stuff again."

He couldn't help it. "I just want to get home." He turned to Marissa. "I saw it, right where you were going to fall. The light, that weird shimmer. If I'd moved faster, I could have gone back, right?"

"I guess so. I could be—or he could be—" Marissa shook her shoulders, as if she wanted to dislodge the could-have-beens. "But we're not. We're all right where we started this morning. So what was the point?"

"The point is, I could be with Marcia right now."

"Ask me, it's lucky for you it didn't work out," Chuck muttered through a mouthful of yet another hotdog.

"What do you have against Marcia anyway?"

"It's more like what she has against me. She's never liked me."

"Because you never tried with her. Or at least where I come from Chuck didn't. Never got to know her or came along when I invited him to the stuff she likes to do. He always wanted me to stand her up for his poker nights and football watch parties."

"So you bailed on your best friend instead?" Chuck crumpled the paper boat that had held his hot dog and tossed it aside. Gary caught it and put it in the box.

"Don't say I'm whipped, Chuck. That's not how it is."

"I'm not saying that. I do think you should have a life outside your marriage, and that's one of the things Marcia and I never agreed on around here. I kept Gary involved in aspects of life that weren't hers."

"Maybe that's something I should work on if I get back," he acknowledged, then changed it to, " _When_ I get back."

They had reached Chuck's rental. Marissa had fallen slightly behind them, seemingly lost in her thoughts. She hadn't responded at all to the argument, which, Gary was pretty sure by now, was unusual for her.

"It'll be okay," he told her as he opened the car door for her. "We've got some time before the pileup on the Dan Ryan. Let's see if Crumb found his scientist buddies."

The ride back to the bar was quiet, and when they arrived at McGinty's, they found the place just waking up. The kitchen staff was prepping for lunch, and out in the bar, Crumb was chopping lemons and limes. "What's up?" he asked.

"The probability that we're all losing our grip on sanity." Chuck sat down at a stool and looked at Crumb expectantly. His shoulders drooped when Crumb poured him a cup of coffee. 

For once, Gary didn't mind Crumb's overbearing watchfulness. The last thing he needed right now was Chuck getting too relaxed to help him out. "Water for me," he said when Crumb waved a coffee mug his way with raised eyebrows.

"I'll be in the office," Marissa said, and headed that way with her dog. 

Crumb watched her go, then turned a pointed look to Gary, who gave him a brief outline of what had happened at the bus stop. "You're just letting her deal with it by herself?"

Gary shrugged. "She keeps saying she's okay."

"Let me give you a hint about women: the more she says it, the less okay she is." Crumb dried his hands on a towel. "Anil and Ryan should be here soon. Let me know when they show." He practically stomped across the bar to the office.

Gary looked at Chuck, who shrugged. "Probably on edge because he's had too much of this sludge he calls coffee." 

Lunch prep was a comfortable, established rhythm of clinking glass and silverware, punctuated by teasing and laughter among the staff, who included Chuck and Gary in their stories and jokes. Gary pretended he understood the references. He still felt askew, a discordant note in this well rehearsed song, but for the first time, sitting at the bar while purposeful activity flowed around him, he thought he could relax into the rhythm and become part of it. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to be stuck in this universe if he had this kind of support, these kinds of friends, this kind of home. But he would have to find a way to get Marcia back.

Ryan and Anil showed up about twenty minutes later. Gary recognized them from the Gleacher Center, where they'd helped him up when he'd been plowed into by his doppelganger. Or the other universe. Or whatever. They were young and big-eyed, and except for their jeans and untucked shirts, they reminded him of the interns who showed up at Strauss and Associates every summer to help with the filing and learn the ropes of markets and investing. 

While Chuck went to get Crumb and Marissa, Gary pulled a couple of chairs over to a booth. Once Crumb made introductions, Gary told them what had happened over the past few days. Anil wrote down every word on a yellow legal pad. Marissa told them about her fall, and Chuck chimed in with his own observations and harebrained theories, most of which sounded like the plots of B movies. The wildest one centered around aliens with advanced technology using Gary as a test subject.

Once Gary had wrapped up his story, Crumb jumped in with a theory that was a lot more solid than anything Chuck had proposed. "What I'm thinking is, this computer your boss made is obviously more functional than he's letting on," he said.

"It's really not," Anil said. 

"Trust us," Ryan added with a roll of his eyes. "Dr. Stinton's better at dreaming up new tech than he is at developing it." 

"But this switch did happen, and his computer is the most likely culprit." Crumb leaned in as if he were interrogating a suspect. "I know these three sound like a pack of weirdoes, but you can trust them. You need to get us to that machine so it can unmix this mix-up."

Ryan shook his head. "We can't get you access to something that doesn't exist. Even if we had a quantum computer, there's no energy source that could power an exchange of two human beings. It would be like a bomb going off on campus." 

"Like twenty bombs," Anil said. "You'd definitely notice."

"I sure as hell noticed," Gary pointed out. 

"The whole planet would have noticed," Ryan countered.

"Didn't you feel the ground shake back at the Gleacher Center? And the light, that was real."

"There was a kind of diffraction," Ryan admitted. "I thought I was getting a migraine."

"Maybe that's what this headache is," Gary said. 

"So—wait. You saw a shimmering light and got a headache?" Anil asked.

"I keep seeing it. And every time, the headache gets worse."

"Those are classic migraine symptoms," Ryan said. "Happens to me about once a month."

"It's more. I'm telling you, it keeps coming back, and it's bringing mini earthquakes with it. You want energy?" He pointed to Marissa. "It nearly threw her under a bus this morning."

Anil shrugged. "We can check with NGS, see if they recorded anything, but I'm telling you, the kind of energy to do what you're talking about would have sent half this city into Lake Michigan."

"What if some other force is intervening?" Marissa's hands shaped a sphere, then spread out. "Dissipating the energy in smaller doses to soften the blow?"

Anil and Ryan exchanged doubtful glances. "What kind of force are you thinking of?" Anil asked.

"God," Marissa said with a little shrug. "Call it what you want, but ultimately, God can do anything He wants."

Chuck let out a groan. Anil pressed his fingertips to his eyes for a second. 

"You told me you both saw Hobson fall and change clothes," Crumb pointed out.

Lowering his hands, Anil nodded. "I can't deny I saw something. I'm just not sure it's what you believe it is."

"Science does live in the uncertainties." Ryan sounded like he was quoting someone. "Why don't we treat this as a thought experiment?"

"An experiment perpetrated by an advanced race of aliens!" Chuck said, oblivious to the exasperated expressions directed at him from all sides. 

"If it were possible," Ryan went on, "and if it could happen without that devastating release of energy, what would it mean, if M-theory is accurate?"

Anil sighed, then seemed to shift mental gears. "If that were the case, the membrane that is our universe would have to be stuck to the membrane of the other one. It's like—okay, here." He pulled a couple of napkins from the dispenser and sucked up a bit of soda into his straw, then let it drip onto one of the napkins. He held them up together. "Whatever force pulled you and your doppelganger through is also holding those membranes together in that spot, but they can't stick together very long. Universe A and Universe B, they're exchanging stuff—atoms or particles, probably, maybe a few molecules—to keep each other in balance. But that can't keep happening forever. They're going to pull apart, and they'll want to do it when you're in the same place as the other guy, so the exchange is even. That takes energy, which might explain the shaking you're feeling."

"It tried to tear me apart," Marissa said with a shiver. Crumb shot a glare at Gary, as if the whole thing was his fault. "It left a huge crack in the sidewalk. Are you saying these earthquakes will keep happening if Gary doesn't go back?"

"It could be those quakes are the energy being dissipated," Ryan acknowledged. He snagged Anil's notepad and scribbled an equation or two, but it wasn't the kind of math Gary could follow. 

Anil glanced at the equations. "That might explain it. We don't know for sure. But—" He pulled the two napkins apart. "This is what the multiverse wants, is for these two membranes to get unstuck. And what the multiverse wants, it's going to get, one way or another."

Gary gulped. Both napkins had ragged holes where they'd been stuck together. "That looks bad."

Anil nodded. "It's entirely possible a transfer like that would leave damage behind. On the other hand, this is uncharted territory. For all we know, the membranes will heal themselves."

"Or they might collapse into each other," Ryan said.

"What does that mean?" Gary asked.

Ryan looked at Gary for a minute, then took the napkins from Anil, crumpled them, and tossed them on the table. "Something like that."

They were all stunned into silence, all but Marissa, who whispered, "What—"

Chuck nudged the napkin balls over to her hand. 

"Oh, no." She sat up straighter. "No. I won't accept this. There has to be a way to get both of them home without destroying everything we know. If there was a way for it to happen in the first place, there has to be a way to send them back."

"Maybe you should talk to God about it," Anil said, not nearly as sarcastically as Gary expected.

"What makes you think I haven't?"

"Then why aren't we back already?" Gary asked. 

At first, no one had an answer, but then Chuck said, "Well, there is that other factor. The other thing we can't explain with science."

"What's that?" Anil asked.

"Trust me," Crumb told him, "You do not want to know."

"Maybe he does," Marissa said. "It might help explain all the things physics can't."

Both students stared at Gary. He squirmed, feeling trapped. "It's not me. It's the other guy who's me, but not. Stuff happens to him. Weird, unexplainable stuff."

Crumb let out a low sound, almost a growl.

"He's kind of psychic," Chuck said quickly. "He gets these feelings about events. Future events. But he didn't know this mess was going to happen ahead of time, did he, Marissa?"

"No," she said softly. 

"Okay," Anil drawled, looking among the group for more, but Chuck and Marissa had clammed up, Crumb looked like he was about to launch himself out of the booth, and Gary certainly wasn't going to try to explain a clairvoyant newspaper to a pair of physicists when he didn't understand it himself. 

"We should go run some equations," Ryan finally said, tapping his pencil against the legal pad. "Maybe we can narrow down the possibilities and prepare ourselves for—" He nodded at the balled-up napkins. "That. If everything you're saying is true, and I'm not saying we believe you, but if it is?" He whistled. "We're in for a shakeup."

"No pun intended?" Chuck asked. Ryan shrugged.

"This would make one hell of a dissertation," Anil said drily as everyone stood. 

"If there's still a universe to write it in a few days from now." There was a weirdly cheerful note in Ryan's voice. Gary supposed this was the kind of thing a physicist might wait a lifetime to experience, but he couldn't share in their newfound enthusiasm for what had happened, or for what might happen next. That hole in the napkins represented his life. And, he supposed, the other guy's. He nodded numbly while Crumb thanked the students, then fingered the balled up napkins as he watched them go. 

"Speaking of your psychic abilities." Chuck said, "don't we have somewhere we need to be?"

"Oh, yeah." Gary reached for the newspaper, which had remained tucked in his back pocket the whole time. It was almost as if he was used to it. Almost as if he was meant to have it.

"That's my cue." Crumb gathered up the empty mugs and took them to the bar. Gary didn't understand the guy. He had his nose in so much of what went on, but he refused to face the truth about the newspaper head-on.

"He saved your life yesterday. I think he feels responsible for you now the way he does for our Gary." Marissa said as if she'd read his mind.

"Huh." Gary understood, better than ever before, how that mantel of responsibility could weigh on a guy. "Guess I'd better go repay the favor. You know, as far as the universe is concerned," he added at Chuck's confused look.

"As far as the universe is concerned, you must be the man for the job," Marissa said. "Lucky for you and the people in the next story in the paper, you don't have to take it all on yourself."

Chuck raised his eyebrows at Gary as he pulled his car keys out of his pocket. "Yeah," he echoed. "Lucky."

* * * * *

"What is it with this paper of yours?" Chuck demanded, ignoring Gary's shushing motion. A woman walking her Dalmatian on the other side of the quiet residential street turned to look at the trio gathered outside a greystone rowhouse. Gary and Chuck were waiting with Marissa outside Tess's mom's place while she dropped off Lexie. They had twenty minutes or so to get over to the next pair of stories, neither of which was very far from the neighborhood. The problem was, they were in opposite directions. "A guy needing CPR, that I get, but why do we care about a hot dog cart tipping over?"

"Being blown over," Gary corrected, shifting the box of hot dogs the vendor had given them to his other arm. "Boiling water would have burned the vendor." This mini-disaster had been caused by the wind and not an earthquake, at least as far as he knew. Which he had to admit wasn't very far at all.

"Still," Chuck went on, "it seems penny ante, compared to a standoff with a gun-wielding, deranged—"

"Desperate," Gary corrected, even though he was only half-listening to Chuck. "You didn't seem to mind when he gave us all hot dogs to say thanks." In fact, Chuck had generously offered to eat Lexie's as well as his own. 

Gary was still wondering whether Marissa's fall had been the universe, or the multiverse, if he wanted to use Dr. Stinton's term, telling him to pay attention. Maybe even to try to get back home. But first he had some things to work out, and Chuck was right, a hot dog cart tipping over didn't seem like a priority right now. It felt as though he was in a race against time to get things right. What else would he mess up before he did?

"What's next?" Marissa asked. No dog, blue shirt. Not his Marissa, but still his friend, and one of the people he was determined to help before he went home. 

"Tess has the paper," he told her. "There's a couple things happening at the same time, though."

"Stories about bad things?"

"What other kind is there, for this guy?" Chuck groused. "In case you haven't noticed, he's not happy unless he's in full-on Houston-We-Have-a-Problem Mode." 

"The problem being, I should try to avoid whichever place the other guy might go." Gary ran the articles he'd seen in Tess's paper through his mind. He had no idea if either one was about to happen back home, but there was no way he'd send Marissa, especially this Marissa, to deal with a mugging. "If he's anything like me, he's going to save kids first. So you two are going to stop the van from plowing into the kids trying to escape summer school. Tess and I will take care of the other thing."

"What other thing?" Marissa asked.

"It's, uh, a robbery. In an alley."

"You mean a mugging. And you think I can't handle it," she said flatly. "For a guy who was so lost a couple days ago, you sure seem to know what everyone else should be doing."

"I just think you'll be better equipped to handle the kids. Than I am," he added when her expression turned stormy. "You have a gift for listening and talking to people and getting them to reconsider some of the really stupid decisions they make." It was true, even if it wasn't the whole reason he wanted her to go with Chuck. "You can talk the kids out of running away from school so they don't get into any trouble. I want you on this because you're the best person for the job."

"What about me?" Chuck asked.

"You're the best escort for the job," Gary ad-libbed. 

"Uh-huh." Chuck took the box out of Gary's hands. "Just for that, I'm eating the last hot dog."

"I'm not sure you should be left alone to deal with a robbery," Marissa said, still tense. "Not after you nearly died because of a man with a gun yesterday."

"I won't be alone. Tess will be there, too." Gary scuffed his shoe against the little wrought iron railing surrounding a tree, one of a row of small maples that adorned the sidewalk. "Look, the truth is, I don't want you guys in danger. You didn't sign up for this."

"And yet you seem to have recruited us," Chuck said.

"Just for the non-life-threatening stuff."

Marissa stood a little straighter. "Exactly how fragile do you think I am? I went through that myself not so long ago, no thanks to that magic newspaper. What makes you think I'm less equipped to handle it than Tess?"

"It wasn't Tess who let you get hurt. It was Evan Cooper." 

"I know that." She bounced her cane off the sidewalk a couple of times, no doubt working out frustration. 

"And if it happens again, like it's about to, I want Tess to be able to handle it. She needs experience, and that's what I'm trying to give her."

"A crash course in how to handle a magic newspaper?" Chuck asked.

"Exactly," Gary said. 

"Maybe you should let Tess decide what kind of help she needs. And as for Evan Cooper," Marissa said, "trust me, I will be going back to Morris and looking him up."

"I think he's in Cabo San Lucas," Gary said. 

"In that case, count me in on your posse." Chuck nudged Marissa with his elbow. "Ride for vengeance!"

"I'm not talking about vengeance." Marissa side stepped away from him. "I want to know why he let so much slide, so that now Gary and Tess have to deal with armed hostage takers and muggers every day."

"Isn't it obvious?" Chuck said. "Cooper focused on the other side of the paper, the side that could be useful to him."

"Focusing on that side of it killed his brother." Marissa turned to Gary. "I'm not sure that paper is as benevolent as you've been making it out to be."

She had a point. But that point was exactly why he was giving them the easier story to tackle. "Maybe the key is finding some kind of balance," he said, knowing full well his friends back home would call him a hypocrite. He'd started out using the next day's race results to get his living expenses, but once Marley had used the winnings from the track to frame him for an assassination attempt, he'd gone off using the paper to make money for good. Of course, the paper had eventually given him a new home and business when Kaddison had turned McGinty's over to him, so it wasn't as if he'd stopped profiting from it completely. 

Speaking of race results …Gary clapped Chuck on the shoulder. "Look, buddy, like I said, I need your help with something else. This is the kind of thing you're best at." 

"Finally!" Chuck rubbed his hands together. "Who needs seducing?"

"Don't be disgusting." Gary couldn't quite believe he was about to say this. The sound of the baby crying from the open window, along with Tess's attempts to comfort her, told him he had some time, but not a lot. He leaned in close, lowering his voice so it wouldn't carry into the greystone. "I need your help to make some money."

"With the paper? Yes!" Chuck bounced on his toes, seeming even more excited than he had at the prospect of seduction. 

At Marissa's appalled expression, Gary told her, "I'm counting on you to rein him in." She pursed her lips, but nodded. 

"Yeah yeah yeah." Chuck waved his hand dismissively. "Give me the Powerball numbers and we can all retire to Cabo with the mysterious Mr. Cooper."

"I was thinking more along the lines of Arlington."

Chuck deflated a little. "Oh, yeah, I guess that works, too. Why are we whispering?"

Gary nodded toward the window. "Tess is skittish. Which is a good thing. What I'm going to do with the money is important, but it's more important in the long run that she finds people she can trust to help her with the paper. Her goal is not to end up like Cooper. Mine is to make sure she doesn't end up like Nate Hill."

"Where is all this do-gooding coming from?" Chuck asked. "The Gary I know quit the Boy Scouts in fourth grade. You must have stuck it out through, what, junior high?"

"High school," Gary said. "Made Eagle and everything."

"Boy Scouts don't cheat," Marissa said testily.

"No," he admitted, "but I don't see any other way to do this, and it'll be offset by the good Tess can do with the paper once she gets her feet under her." Without mentioning at least one other plan he had in mind for a relatively small chunk of the winnings, he pulled a napkin from the diner out of his pocket. "You're headed for Burely Elementary to save the kids. Where I'm from, there's a betting parlor half a mile west of the school. If there isn't one here, I'm sure you can find one." He handed Chuck the napkin and the last of the money Marcia had given him. "Put this on the trifecta I wrote down."

Chuck read the napkin and whistled. "At sixty to one odds? That's a chunk of change, buddy."

"Exactly. Get the winnings except for five percent in a cashier's check made out in my name. That last five percent is yours. Do whatever you want with it."

"Race seven." 

"Huh?"

"You said whatever I want, and what I want is to bet that lousy five percent on the winning horse in race seven."

"I don't know which horse is going to win race seven, and Tess has the paper."

"Then get it from her once she gets out here!"

"Sorry, Chuck, this is as far as I can go. Won't you feel better about it if you win it on your own?"

"Gary," Marissa began, more hesitant than the Marissa in his universe would have been, "do you really think this is a good idea? I don't think money is going to solve Tess's problems."

"Maybe not all of them, but it will give her time and space to solve them herself. Don't tell me money wouldn't solve some of yours."

She chewed on her lip for a moment, then said, "Fair enough. But if you're going to do this, wouldn't the lottery be easier?"

"It would, but this way the money comes out of the bookies' pockets, not the poor homeless guy who was going to get the whole jackpot and donate half of it to the children's hospital. He's down on his luck, he—" Gary waved his hand, as if he could brush away the knowing smile dawning on Marissa's face. "I just don't want him to lose out and turn into another Cage, that's all."

Chuck bounced like a half-wound jack-in-the-box. "Gar, man, you know I love you, but I'm going to need a bigger commission. Twenty percent."

"No way."

"Ten percent. Final offer."

"Five, and I let you drive the BMW for a week."

"And I get to park in your garage? Sold." Chuck held out his hand. Gary fished the keys out of his pocket and dropped them into Chuck's palm. "Like I said, I love you, man."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marissa, you're going to take the cashier's check and get it to Marcia if anything happens to me."

"What's the money for?"

"Her," he said as Tess stepped outside and started down the steps of the rowhouse. "I'll go to Marcia and draw up papers with instructions about who gets the winnings and what they should do with it." 

"Isn't there anyone other than Marcia you could involve in this?" Chuck asked.

Tess joined them at the curb. "What are you talking about?" she asked.

"Who." Chuck made the face of someone who'd bitten into an apple and gotten a mouthful of worm. "Marcia."

"The woman at the bus stop? What's she got to do with all this?"

"Nothing good," Chuck said.

"Don't listen to him," Gary told her. "They're going to take care of the school kids, okay? You and I can deal with the rest." He didn't miss the scowl that flitted across Tess's face. "This will work, I swear. I'll explain on the way."

Chuck raised an eyebrow. "You going to tell her about—"

Gary interrupted him with a light elbow to the gut. "Don't worry about it, Chuck. Go." Gary practically shoved Chuck toward his SUV. 

"By the way," Chuck called as he climbed into the driver's seat, "As long as we're headed downtown, I'm gonna trade this for his BMW before you change your mind."

"Marissa, keep him in line, will you? We'll meet you at Rush and Illinois in an hour or so."

She nodded. "Be careful, you two."

"Are you sure they can handle it?" Tess asked as the SUV pulled away.

"The runaway kids? Yeah." Gary wasn't sure about the rest of it, and part of him wished he'd fully explained his plan to Marissa, but he wanted to be sure they got the money first. The last thing he wanted to do was to disappoint her again. "How'd things go with your mom?"

"About as well as they went when I picked Lex up yesterday."

"Which is?"

"Not good. She doesn't believe I got this face from walking into a door at the diner."

"Maybe if you tell her about the paper—"

"I told you, not now. Not yet anyway. The mugging happens about six blocks from here." She picked up the pace, and Gary half-jogged to catch up with her. Without the stroller, she was fast.

"This is actually pretty easy," he told her. "I've done it before. We get to a pay phone that's close enough that the dispatcher will believe you can see what's going on, and you call 911 a few minutes before it's supposed to happen. The cop car that shows up will scare the robbers away, or catch them before they can do any real harm."

Tess came to a dead stop beside a crossing light. "You think I haven't figured that out?"

"Oh." The other night, when he'd seen her at the fire. "That's what you did at McDonald's. Why'd you run away from me?"

"Because I'm not an idiot. Because I had my baby with me." The light changed, and she headed through the crosswalk at an even faster pace. "I remembered you from the diner, figured you were stalking me. I thought maybe Evan wanted the paper back. Or the lottery numbers," she added with a suspicious look at Gary. 

"I'm not with him, I—"

"Yeah, I know, you swear. But your friend Chuck reminds me of him." 

He let out a grunt of acknowledgement. "He is going to help save the kids. I mean, it'll be mostly Marissa, but you can trust them to get the job done. And not just today. Any time you need them." What was the word she'd used? "You won't have to triage so much."

She blinked rapidly, then started forward without saying anything. They quick-stepped another block before she asked, "How many?"

"How many what?"

"How many stories have you missed?" Her steps slowed as she turned to look at him. "How many times have you failed? And how do you live with yourself afterward?"

"There have been a few times I couldn't do everything I wanted to," he admitted, thinking of JoJo, and of the drunk driver who'd killed himself and his wife. But not his little girl. Gary had changed that much at least. "Marissa tells me it all happens for a reason, but I don't know if I believe that. We do what we can, and we have to live with what we can't."

"How?" Her tone was equal parts challenge and plea.

"I'm still trying to figure that out." They'd reached the neighborhood where the mugging was supposed to happen, slightly more downtrodden than the one where Tess's parents lived. There were small brick shops up and down the street, some with boarded or barred windows on their upper stories. Gary pointed to a booth outside an Army-Navy surplus store. "There's a phone. You want me to make the call?"

"I've got it." 

Tess adopted a pitch-perfect Australian accent as she told the dispatcher, "Strange men were following me. I think I scared them away with my pocket knife, but I'm worried they'll move on to someone else."

While she assured the dispatcher she was safe and sculpted a description from the smattering of details in the article, Gary walked past several alleys. He saw two guys who looked to be in their mid-to-late twenties lying in wait in one of them and slowed his pace, making eye contact so they'd know he'd seen them. One pulled a pack of cigarettes from a pocket and waved it at him, as if to signal they'd just ducked off the street to have a smoke, but when a patrol car cruised by they took off running to the other end of the alley, which was open to the next block over. Gary started to follow them, but Tess jogged up behind him. "Was that them?"

"Yeah. They saw the cops, so they're probably gone for good."

"I'd settle for them being done for today." Tess looked down at the paper clenched in her fist, and a slow half smile dawned on her face. "Or maybe for good." She turned the paper so Gary could see.

POLICE FOIL MUGGERS

"Chicago police officers spotted an attempted robbery on the 2000 north block of Dorsey Boulevard early yesterday afternoon. Police credited an anonymous tip about an earlier attempted mugging for alerting them to possible criminal activity in the area."

"We did it!" Gary held up his hand for a high five. Tess rolled her eyes, but slapped his hand. "Window washer next?" he asked. It was about a mile and a half away, and they had almost forty minutes to get there. 

"It's that or study for my final," Tess said. 

"If you need to study, I can do this. Or you could go get Lexie and spend the day with her."

"I was joking. God!" She shook her head and started down the block. Gary caught up in time to hear her add, "The last thing I want to do is go back my mother's. She gave me more crap about the bruises on my face than she did about getting pregnant."

"Because she cares about you," Gary said. "Maybe you should tell her."

"About the paper? That's a solid no."

"But if you need help, why not ask your family?"

"She's my _mother_. If I could get her to believe me, she would eventually try to help." She shook her head vehemently. "I can't lose her the way Evan lost his brother."

"No, of course you can't," Gary agreed. "Sorry, I just thought—"

"You think I can't do this." She flexed her fingers into and out of a fist, then admitted, "You may be right."

Gary let that hang between them as they neared the building where the window washer was supposed to fall from his perch outside the tenth floor. It was, he realized, about a mile or so away from McGinty's. Or where McGinty's should have been. They found the building, and the window washer, on Illinois and Rush Street.

Tess craned her neck and shielded her eyes from the sun. "Looks secure enough. Wonder why he falls?"

"Maybe he spills the cleaner and slips on it," Gary guessed. "Or gets startled by a siren. Or maybe he's tired and drifts off." At Tess's puzzled frown, he added, "I've saved a window washer or two in my day. Lots of reasons he could fall."

"I'll file those away," she said drily. "We have some time before he falls. I'm going to go up and knock on the window, see if I can get him to come inside before whatever happens happens." 

Gary followed her into the lobby of the building, but while they waited for the elevator, she shot a suspicious look at him. "Is getting shaken off the building by an earthquake on your list?"

He blew out a breath. "I guess that's a possibility."

"Why don't you stay down here, just in case the other Gary Hobson is up there?"

"Why would he be?"

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Okay, sure." The numbers above the elevator ticked down. "Look, Tess, once Chuck and Marissa get back, and this is taken care of, I want us to go talk to Morris at the _Sun-Times_. I think it'll clear up some of your questions." 

The elevator arrived and the doors opened with a buzz. "More likely it'll raise a thousand more," Tess said as she stepped into the elevator. "Maybe you should go wait on the corner for your friends."

"Be careful up there," he warned as the doors closed. He meant to head outside, he really did, but as he passed the directory, a name caught his eye. His name. 

Staples, Kaufman, and Hobson, Attorneys at Law.

Marcia. He owed her an apology, and nearly as important, she could help put his plan into place. He went back to the elevators, headed for the ninth floor.

* * * * *


	31. Chapter 31

_Once you have been in an earthquake you know, even if you survive without a scratch, that a like a stroke in the heart, it remains in the earth's breast, horribly potential, always promising to return, to hit you again with an even more devastating force._  
_~Salman Rushdie_

* * *

"I don't understand," Chuck said as Gary got out of the car. "Aren't we trying to stop a pileup on the Dan Ryan? What are we doing in a parking garage?"

"The article said the driver came from lunch at the Blackbird and was rushing home to his sick wife when his tire blew out," Marissa explained. "Gary's going to give him cab fare instead."

"So why not give it to him in the restaurant?"

"This is faster," Gary said over his shoulder. He checked around to make sure no one was coming, then slipped an envelope with the taxi fare and a note under the windshield wiper of the blue Camaro. "We don't know what he looks like, but this car is in the photo." 

"It may be faster, but it's also less likely to get me a steak."

"If it were you, would you believe us?" Gary asked. "With a car like this, he needs a really good reason to take a taxi." Which was why he knelt next to the driver's side front tire, removed the valve cap, and let out enough air to flatten it. "Besides, Marissa says this sounds like something the other me would do."

"I did say that," Marissa acknowledged slowly. Gary let air out of the rear tire, just in case the guy had a spare. "But won't we cause more turbulence if we hang around where he might be?"

"I'm not sure that'd be a bad thing." Gary stood and waited for a minute, hoping the ground would shake, that the silvery light would show up. Nothing happened. He climbed back into Chuck's car. "If that turbulence shows up again, I'm thinking my best bet is to throw myself into it. How else am I going to get home? Waiting around for the paper or God or whatever to decide I've done enough or the other me's done enough is getting me nowhere."

In the back seat, Marissa scratched her dog between his alert ears. "I understand your impatience, but don't want anyone getting hurt."

"That's what we're doing today, right? Look—or don't—" he amended, pulling the newspaper he'd started to show her back. "We stopped the traffic accident, and now we're going to make sure the window washer doesn't fall. You have so much faith in this thing, maybe it's okay to believe it's feeding us stories that send us to the best places for us to be, even if they are where that other guy happens to be."

"Yeah, well, if you see any of those woo-woo shimmers, remember the napkin," Chuck said. "If you erase us all out of this existence, I will find you and haunt you in the next one."

"I'm shaking in my boots," Gary muttered. "Up here, Chuck, the corner of Rush and Illinois, it's—" He broke off when he realized where they were.

"What's wrong?" Marissa asked.

He gulped. "Marcia. She works here."

"Not in this reality, she doesn't. Or she didn't, last time I paid the least bit of attention to her." Chuck navigated his car into a parallel parking space. "Her firm is up on the Gold Coast. And even if she has moved down here, she's not your Marcia. Haven't we figured that much out?"

"I want to check. I know it's not her, but—"

"But maybe if you walk into the office that's hers where you come from, you'll somehow be home?" Marissa asked. "What if you cause another earthquake?"

"I have to try. Marcia must be wondering where I am. Unless he's convinced her he's me."

"He wouldn't," Marissa said, though Chuck didn't look so sure. "He's over Marcia, and even if he wasn't, he wouldn't pretend to be you just to get back together with her. His conscience wouldn't let him, no matter how much some other part of him might want to. Oh, what?" she asked exasperatedly at a throaty hum from Chuck. 

"It's just, if he had a chance to have her back, to start over with the last two years, maybe he'd take it." Chuck darted a glance at Gary.

"He's changed." Marissa's voice tightened as she tried to open the car door. "He doesn't want that anymore. Chuck, do you still have the child locks turned on?"

Chuck hopped out and opened her door with a flourish. "M'lady." A twist of Marissa's mouth conveyed affronted dignity as she exited the car, dog at her side. 

"Well, I haven't changed, thank God," Gary said. This must be the drawback of having friends, being constantly analyzed under their microscopes. He pointed at the building. "That's her window. Ninth floor, fourth from the corner."

"What about the window washer?" Marissa asked.

Gary tilted his head back a bit more, squinting at the suspended platform. "He's up there doing his job. Seems fine. We have half an hour or so. I'll head up there, warn him off, and stop by to see if Marcia's in her office on the way."

"Uh-huh. Isn't there a lost puppy in that newspaper we can use that extra time to find?" Chuck, who seemed to have caught some of Marissa's worried vibes, bounced on his toes. "A handy stock tip or two?"

Gary squared his shoulders. "I don't care if it's a good idea. I'm going in." 

"What if someone gets hurt?" Marissa asked. "What if _you_ get hurt?"

He'd already been shot, which they both seemed to keep forgetting. "Maybe I'll get hurt, or maybe I'll get home. At this point, I'm willing to take the risk." He glanced at Chuck, who watched him with a look of equal parts concern and respect. He hadn't seen Chuck look at him that way in a long, long time. "You heard those science guys. If we don't change this soon, we risk losing both realities." And he risked losing everything that mattered to him, risked being stuck here forever with no way home. "I have to try. But, uh, maybe you guys should wait outside. It might be easier for me to approach Marcia alone."

Chuck snorted. "You think I want to talk to any version of that woman?"

"What are you planning to say to her?" Marissa asked.

"I'm not sure. It just feels right, like maybe that paper brought us here for a reason."

"I still don't like it," Marissa said.

"Pretty sure none of this is about what you or I like." It sure hadn't been about what Gary liked, not since the whole mess had started. "It's about what I need to do to get home."

Marissa acknowledged that with a nod and a sigh. Chuck gave Gary a pat on the back. "Go get her, buddy. We'll keep an eye on the window washer. Or at least I will."

The entryway was shaded by a canopy and a pair of potted trees. The door was unlocked, and the reception desk inside was unattended. As the door closed behind him, he turned back. Chuck and Marissa were talking, heads bent together. Maybe he should have said a real good-bye, just in case. But if the paper had brought him to Marcia's building to get him home, it was probably better to get on with it. He turned resolutely toward the lobby directory. There was no listing for Staples, Kaufman, and Hobson. He pressed the elevator call button anyway, and waited for a ride to the ninth floor. Just as one set of doors opened, the bank of buttons blurred in front of him. Gary shook his head, trying to clear his vision. Did this mean the other guy was here, too? Here with his Marcia? In that case, he really needed to get to her office. He stepped into the elevator, hoping like hell he wouldn't end up trapped between floors at the next quake. 

As the elevator took him up, he checked the newspaper—and breathed out a curse. The time of the window washer's fall had changed. Now the guy was going to fall in five minutes instead of thirty. From ten floors up. 

The other guy had to be here, which meant Gary had to get to Marcia. But in a few minutes an innocent window washer was going to be dangling from a damaged scaffolding ten floors up. Marcia's office on the ninth floor had a widow that opened. He could save the washer and get home to his own life in one fell swoop. 

But the office on the east side of the ninth floor wasn't Marcia's; it was an interior decorator's, and they seemed to care as little about security as the rest of the building. He dashed past the receptionist's desk into the office.

"Sir? What are you doing here?" asked a woman working at a desk covered in carpet and wallpaper samples.

"Trying to get home." Gary pushed past her desk and went to the window. Opened it, craned his neck, and spotted the window washer a couple of windows over, just above him. "Hey!" Gary called, leaning out and waving to get the guy's attention. "Get inside! Now! There's gonna be an earthquake!" 

He heard the man laugh, but he couldn't quite see his face. "In Chicago? Sure, buddy!"

"I'm telling you—" Just then, the floor beneath Gary's feet shifted. It was starting.

He spun around. The decorator was on her feet, phone in hand, though she didn't seem to know who to call. But just behind her, in the center of the room, there was a shimmer of silvery light. Gary started toward it. "Excuse me," he said as he rounded her desk. He reached out for the light, but something got tangled in his feet. He tripped and landed on his knees. 

The cat leaped out from between his legs and batted at his nose. The damned _cat_. "You're killing me," Gary told it, and was pretty sure it was literally true.

* * * * *

The offices of Staples, Kaufman, and Hobson were more welcoming than the ones Gary remembered Marcia working in, more wood and live plants than chrome and glass, with comfortable leather chairs in the waiting room. Gary didn't recognize the receptionist, who gave him a friendly smile. "Hello, Mr. Hobson. Are you taking her to lunch?"

"Maybe. Is she back from her client meeting?"

"Yes. Let me see if she's free." She picked up the phone and murmured into it. After a moment, she made eye contact, her smile a little tighter, said, "Yes, of course," and hung up the phone. "Have a seat, Mr. Hobson. Mrs. Hobson will be ready for you in a few minutes." From the change in her demeanor, Gary wondered if Marcia was drawing up divorce papers. But her smile warmed again as she gestured to a table between two leather armchairs. "We have today's _Wall Street Journal_ if you want something to read."

Gary wasn't interested in yesterday's news. "Do you have paper and a pen I could use? Maybe an envelope?"

She handed over the office supplies without so much as a raised eyebrow. Gary perched on the edge of an armchair and busied himself writing letters. One to Tess, and then one to himself. Sure, it was weird, and possibly futile, but he didn't see any other way to make sure things turned out right. He imagined Marissa would probably have something to say about his control issues, but as long as doing this meant he could get home to her with a clear conscience, it'd be worth being psychoanalyzed. 

Twenty minutes later, the receptionist's phone buzzed and she told him Marcia was ready for him. That was probably less true than anyone realized, but Gary thanked her as he pushed open the door to Marcia's office. 

The first thing that struck Gary was the view. The big picture window behind Marcia's desk framed stone and glass buildings that lined a broad avenue and ended a mile or so east in a marina, and, beyond that, the grey-blue sweep of Lake Michigan. Marcia stood, blocking out the city. "Gary, I'm sorry," she said with a concerned frown that made him second-guess his assumptions about why she'd made him wait. She waved a hand at her phone. "Mr. Mifflin's call was crucial to that case I have to argue before the Illinois Supreme Court next week. I've been trying to talk to him instead of one of his flunkies for a month." She regarded him for a moment, her expression a mix of curiosity, consternation, and wariness. When he hesitated, caught in her gaze and chewing on his lip, she sighed. "What have you decided to tell me?"

It was a loaded question if he'd ever heard one. Her calculated, telegraphed lawyer moves, like making him wait, and now nodding him to a chair lower than hers so they were at eye level, were the tiny manipulations that had scratched at him like sandpaper on his skin and led to every fight he'd ever had with his own wife. Realizing his Marcia had manipulated him had made it easy to dismiss her, to not give her that chance to know about—well, not about the paper, that had come later, once her armor against him was fully locked in place—but to know _him_. What he wanted for their relationship and for his future, his growing dissatisfaction with his job, his fear that he'd never find the sense of purpose and direction she'd always talked about. The great irony of his life was that he'd only figured that part out after she'd divorced him. But it hadn't been the direction of his life that he'd overlooked back then. It had been the direction of their relationship. At the time it had been a subtle difference, just like the difference between saying she'd divorced him and admitting he'd played a part in making their end inevitable, that he'd chosen not to fight for it. It wasn't a choice he could make for anyone else. 

"We need to talk," he said when the silence stretched thin as cobwebs. He tried a sheepish grin, to show her he knew full well she'd been saying the same thing for days.

"Obviously."

He had to find out if this version of Marcia would be open to knowing about and dealing with the paper. If he was getting home, if any part of his threadbare plan would work, he had to tell her now so that other Gary Hobson would have room in his life to help Tess. He twisted his fingers, untwisted them, paced to the window, and leaned back against it. "I came here to tell you the truth. All of the truth."

She swiveled her chair around to face him. "That would be a refreshing change of pace." 

"And I can trust you with the truth? As a—?" Not as a wife. "—a friend?" He waved a hand at the trappings of her profession. "Not as a lawyer." It wasn't exactly that he didn't trust her. She was more like the Marcia he'd fallen in love with than his Marcia had been for a whole year before she'd ended their marriage. It was that he didn't know how far he could go with the science fiction story his life had become before she decided the whole thing was a joke and threw him out.

Something in her expression melted. Why had he always been so darned scared of her? "Gary, whatever's happening, we're a team."

What he was about to tell her might change that. He stalled by asking, "Tell me something, do you remember when you decided to stay in love with me? That you were in it for the long haul?"

One corner of her mouth twisted. "I think it's something we have to decide every day. It's work. Just like finding yourself." She got up, moved to the sofa that lined one wall of the office, and sat perched on one corner, her head tilted to one side. "Don't you want to keep doing this work?"

He joined her, but sat at the other end, leaning forward and clasping his hands in front of him. "The guy you're married to probably does," he said, his voice surprisingly steady. "But I'm not him."

She blinked at him, nodding almost imperceptibly. "Of course you've changed since we were first married. We both have."

That wasn't what he'd said. "I mean in these last few days in particular. I'm not who you think I am."

Marcia picked up a small, clear paperweight with a medallion embedded in the center from the coffee table and turned it slowly in her hands without looking at it. "I saw that this morning. What were you doing with Chuck? And when did you become an expert in CPR?" She laughed, but it was a laugh he remembered from before his marriage had gone sour, a laugh that wasn't at him, but with him. "It's as if you're suddenly a superhero with a secret identity. Or Walter Mitty. I'm not sure which."

"That's just it." Gary ran a hand through his hair. This might have been easier if she were cold and closed off. With nothing to fight against, he knew how Marissa had felt, falling backward off that curb into who knew what. "It's Tess who's the superhero. The girl with the stroller. But how I know her, it isn't what you think. It _really_ isn't what you think. Hell, it's not what any sane person would think."

She shook her head. "If you're in the middle of something so strange, Gary, why didn't you feel as though you could talk to me about it?" She put down the paperweight with a tiny click. "I do want to understand, but more than that, I want to know why you didn't trust me in the first place."

He turned toward her, so their knees were nearly touching. "Three days ago, I was living in a very different version of Chicago. A very different version of my life." He told her everything he'd told Tess the night before, but in reverse order, starting with the part where he was Marcia's husband's doppelganger from another universe and backing his way into the stuff about the paper and Tess. 

Marcia listened without comment, taking it all in with slightly widened eyes, the way she probably listened to defense clients tell her how not guilty they were. 

"And that's what I was doing, you see. Trying to find a way home, back to my own life. My own very weird life." He held out the letters he'd written. "I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but if you help me do this, I think you can get your husband, the Gary Hobson who belongs here, back home."

Marcia took the letters, grazing his hand with her perfectly manicured fingernails. She stared down at them and gave a sigh that could have meant anything from, "I should have known you would get caught up in something bizarre," to "I need to have your head examined." Finally, she admitted, "Your handwriting does look different." She stood and walked to her desk, set the letters down carefully, as if they contained explosives, then walked to the big cabinet on the side wall, opened a door, and poured herself a tumbler of Scotch. 

"Do you believe me?" Gary asked.

She blinked at him over the rim of the tumbler, held up a finger, and swallowed the whole thing. Rolling the glass between her palms, she said, "I want to. I still don't understand what happened at the bus stop. What I saw was—" She gave her head a shake. "I'd rather believe you than think you—or my husband, if what you're saying is true—has lost his grasp on reality." She refilled the tumbler. "But if this were a case, I couldn't take it to court, not without proof."

He didn't have the paper from his universe, not that it would have proved anything. He didn't even have his own wallet. He pushed back his hair and pointed to a rough patch on his forehead. "See that scar? That's from last year. A car sideswiped me on a bridge. I was in the hospital for a few days."

She set down the Scotch, walked over, and touched it tentatively. "That's new. I mean, it's obviously healed, but I've never seen it before. Gary?" Her searching gaze held him so transfixed he didn't realize she'd leaned in closer until her lips landed on his. Just like the last time, he wanted to give in, but when her lips parted, he pulled away. 

"I can't." He stood. The floor didn't feel nearly as steady under his feet as it had when he'd walked in here. What had he been thinking? There was no way she'd believe him. "I should leave."

As he opened the door, Marcia rounded the table she'd put between them. "No, Gary. You don't get to drop me down the rabbit hole and walk out. You need help—"

The door swung open into his face. He yelped and put a hand up to cradle his nose as the blur that pushed past him resolved into Tess. She stopped abruptly, mid-office, to glare at him. "Of course you're here. Does that window open?" Without waiting for an answer, she stalked to the window, opened one of the side panels, and leaned out. "Hey! Yeah, you! You need to get inside before you fall!" She stretched farther out the window until she was on tiptoe, the paper sticking out of the back pocket of her jeans like a lever. 

"What now?" Marcia demanded. 

Gary hurried to the window. The jumpsuit-clad washer stood on a scaffolding secured to the roof with cables, a floor up and one window to the left. As Gary slid over to Tess, a flash of light over Marcia's desk caught his eye. The door home, he thought, but before he could fully turn toward it, the whole building seemed to inhale and then exhale, swaying with the force of another earthquake. A high-pitched scream issued from outside the window, and Gary turned back to Tess just in time to see a squeegee tumble past.

Tess lunged out the window and grabbed a handful of jumpsuit as the window washer slid off the now-dangling scaffolding. Gary threw himself toward her and caught her around the waist, sending the paper flying back into the office. The building gave another heave. He tightened his hold on Tess. It took all his strength to get her feet safely on the floor, and then the two of them hauled the window washer inside. 

The building gave one more sway as they landed in a tangle on the floor behind Marcia's desk. Gary, who was at the bottom of the pile, took a moment to breathe, to hope he hadn't missed his only chance to get home. But only a moment, because when he blinked, Marcia's pointy-toed high heels were in his line of vision. "Is this—what is this thing?" Her voice was sharp and tight.

Some of the weight came off Gary, and the heels backed away. "It's _mine_ ," Tess snapped. 

Oh, boy. Gary untangled himself from the window washer and the two of them stood, though Gary didn't trust the floor, or the walls for that matter, to hold him steady. The sight of Tess yanking the paper out of Marcia's hands didn't help. Marcia let her, but she didn't take her wide-eyed gaze off the paper. The part of the page Gary could see, slightly curled from having been rolled up in Tess's pocket, was just an article about a CTA fare increase. But Marcia waved a hand between it and Tess as she turned to Gary. "That—it—it said someone—" She pointed at the window washer, who stood next to Gary with his mouth open, his dark dreadlocks flopping over his eyes as he shook his head in confusion. "Him. It said he was going to die, and then she—you—he didn't, and the print changed. Gary, what the hell?"

"You wanted something you could take to court," he told her with a shaky laugh. At Tess's yelp, he added, "Not that I'd recommend it."

* * * * *

"What the hell is going on?" the decorator demanded.

The cat nudged at Gary's shoulder with its nose. The shimmer had disappeared.

"Shoo, get out of here." Gary clambered to his feet. He was starting to see why the other guy hated that cat. 

"I was going to say the same to you!" the woman barked.

He threw an apology over his shoulder and dashed out to the bank of elevators, trailed by the cat. Its insistent meowing rose to a yowl when Gary pushed the call button. "What?" he snapped, then saw the cat had planted itself in front of the door to the stairway. Much as he didn't relish the jostling his head would take on the stairs, the last thing he needed was to be stuck on the elevator if the earthquake shut them down. "Why do you have to be _right_ all the damned time?" he asked when the creature gave a satisfied, final mew and led the way down the stairs. Half running, half jumping, Gary followed it down nine flights, trying to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Outside he found Marissa and Chuck in the middle of a gathering crowd, all staring up at the side of the building. "Everyone okay?" Gary asked.

"Not exactly." Chuck pointed. Gary craned his neck up to about the eleventh floor, where a window washer hung from a rope by one hand. His other arm flailed as if he was trying to fly. The cat let out a plaintive meow, but ducked Gary's kick and trotted off to who knew where.

"Help is on the way." Marissa waved her cell phone in his direction. "I've called 911, and I don't think I'm the only one."

"He won't last that long," said a woman behind them. "He needs help." 

Gary didn't know which was worse: that he turned back for the building, or that he didn't stop to think before he did it. Chuck caught his arm. "You can't."

"Someone has to."

"You being in there set off the earthquake that shook the guy off the scaffolding." Chuck kept his voice low, but Gary shifted uncomfortably, wondering who could hear them. "The other guy, our Gar, is here, too. What do you think will happen if you both end up in exactly the same spot again?"

"Chuck's right," Marissa said. "He should be the one to go."

Chuck's eyes went round. He shook his head frantically. "I didn't mean _me_."

"Someone has to," Gary repeated.

"Yeah, someone who isn't me." Chuck and Gary both looked expectantly at the crowd around them, but no one made a move for the building. 

"Chuck, please," Marissa said urgently.

Chuck threw up his hands. "That paper has it in for me, I swear. Never should have come back." But he stomped toward the building.

Marissa took hold of Gary's arm and pulled him down the sidewalk, away from the building and the crowd, following her dog's lead. "We both know why this happened," she said. "People will be safer if you aren't where our—the other Gary Hobson is."

"He's in there with my wife," Gary realized dully. Even if she didn't work in this building in this world, she certainly did in his. "I tried to get back to her, and that cat stopped me."

Marissa's grip on his arm tightened. "When I fell this morning, I wasn't in another version of Chicago. It was some kind of in-between place, with a high pitched whine and a force that wanted to tear me apart. If Gary hadn't caught me, I'm pretty sure it would have." She shuddered. "If Cat kept you from going into whatever it was you saw, he must have had a reason. Maybe he didn't want you to get torn apart any more than I did. Is Chuck up there yet?"

He scanned the windows above the dangling window washer. "Nope. You saying you're worried about me getting hurt? Even if it gets you your friend back?"

She nodded and rubbed her wrist with her free hand. "I think he does want to get back here, but he wouldn't want it to happen at your expense."

His jaw clenched against the pain, against her supernatural logic, against every obstacle between him and home. Bodies pressed closer as the crowd grew. He lowered his voice. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe there isn't any safe way for us to get home? No matter what, I have to try."

"Not if Cat's pushing you away. If he thinks it's dangerous, so does the paper and whatever sends it. And so do I."

"There's Chuck." A window just under the guy dangling from the scaffolding cable slid open. Chuck leaned out, but not very far, and he made no move to reach for the guy. "He's just talking. How's that supposed to help?"

Marissa sighed. "He's not as experienced at this as he likes to think."

"Grab him!" Gary yelled up at Chuck, but his instructions were lost in a collective gasp as the scaffolding swayed in a gust of wind, swinging the window washer like an off-balance pendulum.

A fire truck flew past the spot where Gary and Marissa stood and stopped across the street from the building. "I think the cavalry is here," he told Marissa. 

The firefighters took out what looked like a giant tarp, set it up under the dangling window washer, and inflated it. They called up to him to let go and he plummeted, bouncing safely on the tarp while Chuck leaned out the window, yelling, "And he sticks the landing!"

"Unbelievable," Marissa muttered. 

"That's what I keep saying." They moved even farther down the street, away from the crowd. "Look, we need to make a plan," he told her once they'd escaped the crowd. "I want to go home—I need to go home—but I don't want anyone else getting hurt." He spotted Chuck's rental car and started to take Marissa's arm, then hesitated. "Can I—uh—the car's on the other side of the street, just down the block."

"Lead the way. Spike will guide me along." Her expression turned rueful. "I'm going to get you trained just in time for you to leave."

"Yeah, well, there's another you where I come from. Another woman named Marissa Clark, anyway. Maybe she'd appreciate having someone at work who knows this stuff. Here's the car." Though he was looking for it, he didn't see the subtle clue she must have given her dog to make him stop and sit at attention. 

"I can't speak for her," Marissa said, "but my guess is what she'd really appreciate is a friend."

"I think I can do that. I mean be that." If he got home, once he got home, his life would change, but maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe this wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to him.

Chuck ran up to them gasping, either for air of from adrenaline. "I held his arm until they got the safety cushion under him. It was just like that time with Bernie." He ignored Marissa, who rolled her eyes. "So what's next? We need to get you away from where our Gary's going to be until you figure out if it's safe to go back."

"I told you both, I don't care about safe."

"What about alive? Do you care about that?" Chuck demanded.

"And what about other people's safety?" Marissa asked.

Much as he didn't want to admit it, she was right. What if Chuck had fallen trying to help that guy when Gary couldn't? What if he'd brought this building down in both realities, with his Marcia in it? "Let's go back to McGinty's," he said, admitting defeat. "It doesn't exist there, so he won't show up. Besides, I need a drink."

"What about the paper?" Marissa asked. 

He gave the front page and Metro section a cursory glace, but didn't see anything new. "We've finished our laundry list. Let's go home. McGinty's," he corrected when they both raised their eyebrows. "I meant McGinty's."

* * * * *

Tess shot a furious look at Gary, then swiveled her attention to the befuddled window washer standing next to him. Zahi Duale, Gary remembered from the article. Son of Somali immigrants, engaged and trying to earn tuition for college. "Are you okay?" Tess asked him.

"Yeah, yeah. Thanks." He looked around Marcia's office. "I gotta—um. I have to file a report. Union rules." He turned to Gary. "What's your name?"

Registering Tess's increasing panic, Gary said, "Larry. Larry Dobson. I'm with the, uh, building inspection service." He nodded toward Tess. "This is my assistant—"

"Diana Prince," Tess filled in after a hesitation Zahi didn't seem to notice.

"Right," he nodded, running a hand through his hair. "Harry, Dana, thanks. I gotta file a report," he repeated. "Union rules."

"Can't go against the union," Tess said. 

Marcia recovered enough to wave Zahi toward the door. "You can use the phone in reception."

The building swayed as Zahi left Marcia's office. "We have to get out of here. Or at least you do. Right now." Tess grabbed Gary's arm and pulled him toward the door, but Marcia stepped into their path.

"Nobody's going anywhere until—" She faltered, her gaze darting from Gary to the paper in Tess's hand. "—until I can wrap my head around what just happened."

"Tess, this is Marcia. She's married to the other version of me. You can trust her. I told her everything. And she saw—what exactly did you see?"

Marcia clenched her jaw for a moment. "The article changed," she said with a shake of her head. "It said the man was going to die, and then he didn't, and—it melted away. Unless that's some kind of optical illusion, you must have been… telling the truth?" She didn't sound completely convinced. 

Tess bit down hard on her lip. "I told you what Evan said about keeping it a secret, how telling people hadn't worked for him."

"You aren't Evan. She can help you. Marcia, look at the date." He took the paper from Tess and jabbed a finger at the top corner of the page. "It's just like I told you. I know it's hard to believe but—" The floor gave another lurch, and the receptionist appeared in the doorway.

"They want us to evacuate, Ms. Hobson."

"We're on our way out." Marcia grabbed her laptop and briefcase and they all followed the receptionist to the stairs, joining the flow of lawyers, real estate agents, and dentists. "Don't think you're getting out of this just because of an earthquake," Marcia growled in Gary's ear, one step above him as they made their way down. "You still have a lot of explaining to do, starting with how I'm going to get my real husband back."

He paused on a landing to let an elderly man in a thousand dollar suit go past, then steered Marcia ahead of him with a hand on the small of her back. "Outside, okay? I promise this will all make sense."

He didn't know which response was louder, her snort or Tess's, "Ha!" Both echoed off the staircase walls as they made their way down the final flight of stairs. Once they were outside, they hustled through the milling crowd and huddled under a tree across the street.

"Paper," Tess demanded. 

Gary handed it over as Marcia whirled on him, backing him up against the tree. "What did you do, call down divine intervention to prove your story about a magic newspaper and a parallel universe?"

He tried a wry grin. "Did it work?" Marcia crossed her arms over her chest. Around them, the growing crowd buzzed like a hive of indignant bees. This was Chicago, after all, and while most people were well trained in what to do in case of fire, tornadoes, and underground flooding, they weren't prepared for earthquakes. 

"It's over," Tess muttered, reading a story deep inside the Metro section. "At least for now. They're calling it a seismic anomaly, limited to this block. Couple of bruises and lacerations, but otherwise nothing, not even a broken bone."

"Thank God," Gary said. 

"I told you not to follow me."

He nodded toward Marcia. "That was before I knew her offices were in the building. After what she saw this morning, I had to make things right. I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt." Tess shook her head. Marcia's expression softened for a second, but then her eyes narrowed. "What is it?" Gary asked her.

"Let's say for the moment that I believe all this," she said. "I mean, I know you're not him." She squinted through the dappled sunlight at him. "I can't say exactly how I know, but I know. But you—he. Back in college, he wouldn't let me or any of my roommates walk alone across campus at night. He talked Phil into giving his co-workers time off last year to build a Habitat House when he was just a stockbroker. That's the kind of person he's always been. This—" She nodded toward Tess and the paper. "I don't know what it is, or how she does it, but whether it's real or not, I'm not surprised you want to help her, especially if you're anything like my husband."

"That's good, right?" The edge in her tone made Gary think a "but" was coming. 

She squared her shoulders. "So what makes you think I wouldn't want to help people, too?"

This was not what he ever would have expected from any version of Marcia. "I don't—I mean, I do—" Gary saw Tess roll her eyes behind Marcia's back as she paged through the paper. "I mean, of course you want to help," he told Marcia. "I just didn't know how to explain it all at first. I didn't expect you'd believe any of it."

Marcia's lips twisted. "Did the other version of me believe you?"

"I never told her. The paper didn't come until after she—after we broke up."

She nodded slowly. "Maybe you broke up because you didn't believe she was capable of being a hero."

"Or because I knew she wouldn't want to be one." The words left his mouth before he had a chance to think past who the Marcia in his world had become after their divorce and realize what the Marcia who was here, now, was trying to make him understand.

"My Gary knows me better than that."

"Then he's a lucky guy."

"He is. How do I get him back?"

"I think if we both—" Gary was interrupted by a honk. 

"Hey, Gar!" Chuck called from the BMW, which he'd pulled up to the curb, engine revving, top down. While Gary had been caught up in arguing with Marcia, most of the crowd had started to head back into the buildings. "This saving the world stuff is a lot more fun than you let on. You should have seen Marissa handle those kids. And then we did what you said to do next. Marissa here has the—"

"You guys get the kids safe?" Gary stepped forward to cut him off, shut him up somehow, but he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Tess had slumped against a mailbox, one hand covering her mouth. He stepped over and put a hand on her shoulder. "What is it?" 

She stared at the paper, eyes wide above her hand. 

"Tess?"

She turned the paper to face him, and whispered, "Tell me you know how to handle this one. Please."

There was no hiding it from Marcia, or even from Chuck, a few yards away in his car. The headline, spelled out in huge letters, might as well have been a neon sign.

47 DEAD IN FREAK L CRASH

* * * * *


	32. Chapter 32

_Let me tell you something. I'm from Chicago. I don't break._  
_~Barack Obama_

* * *

If nothing else, Chuck thought as he walked back into McGinty's with Gary and Marissa, the past few days had brought back the contact high he'd always gotten from helping save the world. Being in the middle of it all again, even with the wrong Gary, had reminded him it was real. It would make a great TV show, if only he could capture that feeling on film. He'd have to figure out a way to do it, something that would shine a spotlight on the second banana instead of the hero, since Gar never seemed to want credit for his heroism. 

He tried to explain as much to Marissa when the other Gary went upstairs for aspirin, but she shook her head as she slid into their booth. "You'll still need his permission, and he'll never give it, even if we do manage to get him back."

"Trust me, I can talk him into it."

"Chuck—" she began, then shook her head again. "Don't."

"Why not?"

"Because you've already put two thousand miles between you. The last thing your friendship needs is another barrier."

Chuck took the seat across from her, shooing Cat off the bench. It would probably be best to write the fleabag out of the story. No way was he working with animals, especially Hollywood animals, if Cindy's menagerie was any indication.

Cat jumped up on the opposite bench and snuggled up to Marissa, and what she'd said about him and Gar clicked. "Wait a minute. Are you saying he misses me?"

"I've been saying it all week."

"What about you?"

She tilted her head, no doubt weighing all the faults she always nagged him about against his good qualities. "I have moments," she finally admitted. 

Gary came back and offered her the aspirin bottle, waving Sarah over to ask her for a pitcher of water and some glasses. Marissa took three pills; Gary swallowed a handful and downed them with an entire glass of water in one gulp.

Chuck figured they all needed something stronger, so he ducked behind the bar and filled a pitcher with Goose Island IPA and brought it over to the booth, handing Gary a mug. Crumb followed him over to the group with his usual dour expression. "Little early to be drinking," he observed, flipping the towel he'd been using to wipe down glassware over his shoulder. 

"Liquid courage," Chuck said. "It's hard work, taking care of the—being a psychic," he amended when Marissa cleared her throat.

Crumb hovered without sitting down, as if he was waiting for an invitation, so Chuck nodded at the empty seat next to Marissa. The guy had to know his supposed ignorance about the source of Gary's clairvoyance wouldn't hold up much longer, if it had ever truly existed, but he figured it was up to Crumb to decide when he'd stop pretending he didn't know. Crumb's dilemma about knowing, and admitting what he knew, about Gary would make a great character note for his series. He'd get some curmudgeonly John Mahoney type for the role. 

Chuck poured beers for himself and Gary. He offered one to Marissa, who shook her head. She ran her finger around the rim of her water glass while Chuck filled Crumb in on their morning, and how he'd saved the window washer. It didn't escape his notice that neither Marissa nor Gary, who kept picking up his beer and putting it back down without drinking from it, corrected his embellishment of his own role in the rescue. 

"I kept him hanging on until the fire department set up their giant trampoline."

"It's an air cushion," Crumb said with a significant and somewhat suspicious glance at Marissa. "Sounds like the guy was lucky someone called 911. Again."

"Not too bad for a couple of second bananas, huh?"

"'Banana' is a good word for it," Crumb muttered. 

"The point is," Marissa said tightly, "we know our Gary was there. We know something is driving you both to be in the same place. It seems like it's happening more frequently today."

Gary rubbed his temples. "The point is, he was with my wife." 

Marissa, who'd been sitting with her head tilted back against the booth, eyes closed, said, "Whatever is happening, I know Gary, and he would never cheat with another man's wife."

"Thing is, she's technically his wife, too," Chuck pointed out. He couldn't help it. This guy was almost as much fun to goad as the Gary he'd known most of his life.

Marissa sat up, ready for a fight. At least he could still get a rise out of her. "Technically, she is _not_ , and even if she were, Gary doesn't have time for those kinds of games, not if things are getting as shaky where he is as they are here."

"You think he's really over her?" Gary asked. Chuck winced at the pleading note in his voice.

"Over her, yes, though I don't think he's over people leaving him." 

"Hey, now, I didn't run away from him," Chuck said. "I ran toward my future." Why didn't anyone want to believe that? He didn't like the nagging feeling, like a tiny rip on a thumbnail that kept snagging anything he touched, that maybe he'd taken too much of a detour away from this life, from the paper, from Gary. "I don't have that inbred need to do…what he does all day," he said with a side glance at Crumb. "But saving the window washer, that wasn't all bad." 

"Because it gave you ideas for a television show," Marissa said. 

Crumb snorted. "There's always a catch with you, Fishman."

"I like helping people as much as the next guy. As long as the next guy's not our Gar."

"Then why did you move so far away?" Gary asked. 

"We've been over this." Chuck hit the table with the side of his hand, and all the drinks bounced. "Camilla Danforth. A hundred thousand dollars. My dream."

"Yeah, but aren't they giving out big tax cuts and grants to film here in the city? They are in the Chicago I know."

"Really?" Gears that had been spinning at random all afternoon—no, for days and weeks and _months_ —started clicking into place. "I should have Cindy look into that. As long as her purse poodle doesn't need a manicure."

Marissa blinked. "Her poodle. Gets manicures."

"In between tarot readings, yeah."

"That explains the phone conversation I had with her. Tried to have with her."

"Wait," Gary said. "You really do make television shows?"

"Not yet. But soon." Chuck downed the rest of his beer in a quick gulp. "Very soon. Maybe even on location here in Chicago, especially since you all seem to need my help."

"Not with the bookkeeping!" Gary and Marissa said at the same time.

Chuck shrugged it off. The idea had captured him and it was taking off like the private jet he was going to be able to buy with the profits from this new show. "California's too bright to film the kind of thing I have in mind. We need shadows, alleys—we need Chicago!" He knocked Gary's shoulder with his own. "Thanks, man! This is going to be great!"

"Some second banana," Crumb said. "The world's falling apart and you're spitballing television shows."

"What else do you expect me to do?" Chuck refilled his beer. "I saved one life already. Probably more, seeing as I got Gary two-point-oh here away from the epicenter. Haven't felt any earthquakes since we left that building."

"And that was all your idea," Marissa deadpanned. Chuck shrugged.

"Yeah, well, I'm going to call someone who might actually be able to help." Crumb stood, and Cat shifted off Marissa's lap into the warm spot he left behind. "Maybe Anil's run his numbers and has some kind of answer."

"It's so cute to see you hanging with the nerds," Chuck called after him. "They'd make great secondary characters."

"Is that how you think of us?" Marissa asked. "Characters in your television show?"

"All the world's a stage. Or a screen, these days."

Gary shot him a look; Chuck wasn't sure if it was perplexed or disgusted. 

"Don't mind Chuck," Marissa said, as if she'd seen it. "And don't let his Hollywood flights of fancy shift the focus away from what's really important here."

"They aren't flights of fancy," Chuck protested.

"What's really important?" Gary asked over him.

"Limiting the damage your trip back to your home may cause."

Chuck sighed. There would only be one second banana in his show, he decided. No need for someone who pushed the hero to be even more goody-goody than he already was. 

"I don't want to hurt anyone," Gary said, "but I have to get home."

Chuck shifted in his seat and glanced down at the paper on the bench between himself and Gary, hoping for inspiration. This may not have been the best time for his creative idea to crystallize, but he had to ride the wave when it presented itself. The Metro section was free of Gary-worthy stories, so he flipped back to the front page. And stopped breathing.

"At what cost?" Marissa asked. "We can't do this without taking steps to minimize the damage all that energy could cause. Is already causing."

"Uh, guys?" Chuck said. "I think the damage isn't minimized. I think it might be the opposite of minimized." He nudged Gary hard and pointed at the paper. 

A yowl sounded from over at the bar. "Hobson, what's wrong with your cat?" Crumb called. He was struggling to hold onto Cat, who squirmed around and took a nip at Crumb's hand. "Ow! Filthy beast!" Cat leapt over the bar and jumped up on the bench next to Marissa while Chuck and Gary stared at the paper in horror. Even in the dim light of a back booth, the headline was easy to read. 

"Chuck, what is it?" Marissa demanded.

"There's a new headline. A big one." He looked to Gary, who sat frozen. Some part of Chuck's brain was already calculating how much it would cost to film a disaster like this, but he knew better than to say that out loud. "An L train's going to derail right outside our door." Cat jumped onto the table with a satisfied purr, as if it was pleased with itself for delivering a nightmare of a story.

"Is anyone hurt?"

Gary met Chuck's gaze, opened his mouth, shut it.

"Hello?" Marissa asked impatiently.

Chuck had to swallow hard before he could get it out. "Forty-seven people are going to die."

* * * * *

The L disaster was going to happen near McGinty's, the only home Gary had left, even though it didn't exist here. But maybe he could get back to the place where it did.

"Get in the car," he told the others. "We have to get over there." He crammed into the back seat of the BMW, sandwiched between Marcia and Tess, who held Cat in her lap and the paper open, reading the front page story under her breath. Chuck threw the car into gear and sped the mile or so toward Franklin and Illinois, where a Brown Line train was going to collide with a Purple Line train that was not scheduled to be there at the same moment an earthquake hit. The collision and quake would damage the tracks and send several train cars and the people inside them plummeting to the street below. A photo showed a tangle of L cars, some of them scrunched in on themselves like accordions, hanging off the elevated tracks. Dark smudges that were vaguely human-shaped littered the familiar intersection. 

"Where does the Purple Line train come from?" Tess asked the paper in a strangled tone.

"Through the wormhole, probably," Chuck answered when Gary couldn't. "I don't suppose it's occurred to you _not_ to go over there, since you're probably the cause." Despite his protest, he ran a very yellow light. 

"The story showed up before we even got in the car," Gary pointed out. "Seems like it was going to happen no matter what I did."

"Maybe the paper is trying to lure you there, to show you a way home," Marissa said.

"This story isn't about him," Tess said. "It's about what I have to do." 

Gary recognized the pain and fear in her voice. He knew he sounded the same way when he was caught in the paper's wake. But this wasn't all the paper's fault. He'd done this. Or was going to do this. But if he stayed away, he was just delaying the inevitable.

"The multiverse is trying to heal its scars, isn't it?" Marissa sounded nearly as panicked as Tess. 

"We'll fix this." Gary's response was automatic, but he reached out and squeezed her shoulder. No one asked the obvious question, but it hung in the air: how? "I need a phone," he said, and Marcia handed him hers, shooting him a lifted eyebrow when he dialed the police dispatcher and asked for Detective Tagliotti. 

"Don't be an idiot," Tess growled between her teeth. 

Gary understood her reluctance, but he couldn't see another option. "Who else are we going to—"

"Detective Tagliotti."

"This is Gary Hobson. Don't hang up, just listen," he said at her exasperated huff. "There's an emergency on the L. You have to stop all the trains between the river and Sedgwick—no, Armitage," he amended. "Just stop all the trains. Brown Line, Purple Line, any trains that use those tracks into downtown. And out of downtown."

"Just like that. Stop all the trains. Sure." Rough as the phone connection was, Tagliotti's exasperation came through loud and clear. "Want to tell me what happened, Hobson?"

"It hasn't happened yet, it's—"

"Going to happen, right."

"Look, Tagliotti, you have to believe me." Gary was cut off as the phone was ripped out of his hand.

"Detective, this is Tess Digiacamo. From the insurance agency yesterday. He's telling you the truth. If you don't stop those trains, people will die. Shut down the system. Whether you believe us or not, this one will be on you." She snapped the phone shut and tossed it to Marcia as Chuck pulled up to the curb in front of Gene and Georgetti's Steakhouse, just across the street from where McGinty's should have been. 

"What if the detective doesn't stop the trains?" Marissa asked as Gary and the others unfolded themselves from the back seat.

"We told her what she needs to do. If she does it, great, but if she doesn't, trying to convince her is a waste of time," Tess snapped. "Hey, get back here!" she called after Cat, who took off headed south on Franklin, toward the Merchandise Mart L stop. 

"Would one of you fill the rest of us in on the details?" Marcia demanded. 

"An L train's going to appear on the tracks out of nowhere," Gary told everyone other than Tess, who held the paper out, trying to line up the photo with the intersection. "It shows up just north of the Merchandise Mart. Where we are now," he added for Marissa's benefit. She was looking lost, frustrated, and exactly as scared as he felt. "I think the train gets caught up in that reality hole and comes through."

"Does it go back?" Marissa asked.

Gary thought of the picture he'd seen on the front page of Tess's paper. "Hard to tell."

"So we shouldn't have come in the first place?" Chuck asked.

Gary was already fighting the instinct to run. "What if trying to run away from this makes it all worse? What if staying puts an end to it, one way or another?"

"I don't understand," Marcia said. "I thought I did, but—"

"It's all connected to Gary, all these earthquakes," Chuck told her. "And they're getting worse."

"It might be connected to him," Tess said, "but he's not the only one who'll be affected." 

Gary followed her worried gaze to the crowds of afternoon shoppers and tourists, the windows of the buildings that were full of dentists' practices and real estate offices, the steady flow of traffic through the intersection, and the L tracks above, which thrummed with train traffic up and down the line. He tried to catch Tess's eye, to let her know they'd find a way, but she was too busy assessing possible casualties to acknowledge him.

"Like ripples on a pond," Marissa said, echoing Dr. Stinton. "The effect is radiating and pretty soon the whole city will be affected. Bigger things will go through this rip in reality."

"Bigger stuff than an L train?" Chuck asked. "What are we talking about here?"

"Airplanes," Marissa whispered.

"Buildings," Tess added.

"If there's a rip, I have to fix it," Gary finished. He had to find it first, of course, but considering where they were, he had it narrowed down to one spot: Barney Kaddison's parking garage. "It's the only way to stop the derailment."

Like Tess, he scanned the intersection, but he was looking for Cat, who was usually so pushy about showing Gary exactly what to do. Now that Gary—and both Chicagos—needed him most, he was nowhere to be seen.

"First we have to plug a few holes in this dyke, Little Dutch Boy," Chuck said. "Minimize casualties."

"Minimize," Tess said. Her freckles and eyelashes stood out in sharp relief to her pale face. "Right."

"How much time do we have?" Marcia asked.

"Not enough," Gary told her. Told them all. He searched the intersection for the silver light, for Cat, for any sign of the door back home. "Guys, I have to go."

"You said I needed to ask for help," Tess insisted. "I'm asking right now. I'm asking you."

"She's right," Marcia said. "We can't let a train full of people derail."

Gary didn't have answers. He wanted to help them, to help everyone in the radius of the force that had been messing with him for the past few days, but getting home was the best way to end it for good. It had to be.

"We can't stop the trains in either universe," Chuck said. "There's no way to warn the operators here, not unless your detective friend makes the call." 

"If we can't stop the trains, we have to get people off them." Tess's voice shook—hell, the paper was shaking in her grip. "As many people as we can."

Gary pulled her aside, shooting Chuck and Marcia a look that made them take a step back. He put his hands on Tess's shoulders, not sure which of them needed steadying more. "You can do this."

"I don't know how!"

He took a deep breath, and remembered when he'd felt exactly that desperate. "It's okay not to know. Look, I know what you're feeling. A plane full of people was supposed to crash two weeks after I started getting the paper. It didn't," he said at her gasp. "It didn't, because I stopped another accident, a kid on her bike."

"There is no other accident!" Tess flipped pages, though neither of them really read the other headlines. "There's just this, and I have to stop it."

"The point is, I went with my gut that time, and I learned that if I trust it, things will work out."

She shifted impatiently, but asked, "Did they work out for the kid on the bike?"

"Yeah."

"So what is your gut telling you now?"

The point was supposed to be getting Tess to trust her own gut, but maybe she'd have to learn that in the heat of the moment. "I think I just have to heal the rift, or whatever it is I did when I came here, and things will go back to normal." A tan Crown Vic pulled up behind Chuck's car. "For relative definitions of normal. But you'll have new friends to help you, and together—" He tilted his head toward the trio a few feet away. "Together you can do anything."

"Not if she puts me in jail." Tess shrugged out of Gary's hold, slipping the paper into the back pocket of her jeans, as Tagliotti got out of the Vic, badge and walkie-talkie in hand. 

"Did you stop the trains?" Gary and Tess asked Tagliotti at the same time.

"Hello to you, too," Tagliotti groused. She looked up at the tracks that ran over their heads, and Gary shuddered as a train went past, then stopped a block or so away at the Merchandise Mart. Tagliotti turned and sized up Gary and Tess with a shake of her head. "You'd better be right. We've been receiving reports of earthquakes all day, as if Chicago isn't in bad enough shape."

Out of the corner of his eye, Gary caught an orange-brown blur. Finally. Cat jumped onto the hood of Tagliotti's car. There wasn't time to wonder what it might mean. He went with his gut instinct, that this was his last chance to enlist Tagliotti into the posse of helpers Tess needed. He jabbed a thumb toward Tess. "You want it to get better? You start listening to her."

"And I should listen to either of you because…?"

Gary looked at Tess; Tess looked at Gary. They both looked at Tagliotti and pointed at each other.

"He's psychic."

"She's psychic."

Tagliotti snorted. "Ask me, I think you're both borderline psychotic."

"I told you," Tess said to Gary. "I can't do this your way."

"Do what? What way?" Tagliotti demanded.

Gary sucked in a deep breath. "There's something you need to know about Tess."

"Gary, no."

"Trust me." He turned to Tagliotti. "You remember Nathan Hill. Tell me one thing—did Crumb trust him?"

Tagliotti's jaw worked. Gary was afraid she'd reached her limit with him, but before she could yell again, Cat meowed. She turned to look at it, sitting there like an obnoxious hood ornament, and her shoulders dropped. When she turned back to Gary and Tess, her voice was still tight, but she said, "Not really. That day with the bomb, Hill tried to tell Crumb not to touch it, but Crumb went after it anyway."

"And Hill followed him, even though he knew it was a bomb, to try to get Crumb away from it."

"Yeah." Her face was set in tight lines. She'd not only lost her mentor that day, she'd been there. She'd seen him die. Gary didn't relish pushing her, but there wasn't time for anything gentler. 

"And when the president was nearly assassinated? Did you trust Nate Hill when he tried to tell you about Marley?" Over Tagliotti's shoulder, Gary could see Chuck bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet. Marcia leaned in and said something to him, and he shook his head.

"Why should I have believed him?" Tagliotti asked. "Especially after what happened to Crumb?"

"Because he tried to save Crumb. And when you didn't believe him about Marley, he went after the guy himself, didn't he?"

Tagliotti went stiff again, her expression darkening. Gary wasn't sure where he was finding the words to get through to her. Maybe it was Cat's proximity. More likely it was a couple years of listening to Marissa do the same thing for him. "If you'd believed him sooner, he might have lived. I'm not blaming you, but I'm telling you, that kid had a gift for knowing the future."

"It isn't a gift," Tess said.

"It can be," Gary told her, then turned back to Tagliotti. "Tess has the same gift. But some things are too big for one person to change. You have to help her, no matter what you think of her gift. You have to help her right now."

"Hobson—"

"Please."

Tagliotti opened her mouth, looked at Tess, and closed it with a shake of her head. "I put in a call to CTA. They can't stop the trains all at once. But they've been warned that the earthquakes are making the elevated tracks unstable. They'll pull the lines out of service a few trains at a time as they arrive at secure locations."

"Thank you," Marissa breathed. Gary realized she'd been right behind him all along. 

"It's not enough," Tess insisted. "We have to get the people off the platforms and out from under them. Starting with the Brown Line at the Merch stop."

Tagliotti stared at Gary for a moment, then sighed and pushed a button on her walkie-talkie and spoke into it. "All units in the vicinity of the Merchandise Mart, requesting assistance with crowd and traffic control. And get the CTA on the line. Tell them to put a priority on shutting down trains in this part of the city." She shot another glare at Gary. "Tell them I'm seeing suspicious activity." She released the button and made a "happy now?" gesture with the walkie at Gary and Tess. "If you make a fool of me—"

"We won't." Tess turned to Gary, holding up her watch. "But they might not stop the trains in time."

As if the earth's crust had heard her, the ground beneath them heaved. Gary grabbed her arm to keep them both upright. The L tracks groaned and shifted. Across the street, a small group of pedestrians scattered as a chunk of the parking garage crashed to the ground. 

"How did you know?" Tagliotti sputtered.

"The same way Nate Hill did," Gary insisted. "Come on, we have to get people out of here."

"Everyone except you," Tess said under her breath. She nudged Gary away and told Tagliotti, "You'll need to clear the streets and sidewalks and get everyone off the trains and the Merch Mart platform."

Marissa grabbed Gary's arm as another low rumble started under their feet. "What are you going to do?"

Chuck and Marcia gathered closer. "I don't know," Gary admitted. "I need to get out of here, to get home, but I'm not sure how to get there, and I can't leave if people here are in trouble."

"I thought you said they're in danger because you're here," Marcia said.

"I'll help," Chuck said. "I'll get people off the platform."

Gary blinked at him. "Are you serious?"

"I can't leave all the heroics to the women. If you won't trust me with the race winnings, trust me with this. Go back, go home. Try not to get killed on the way." A sound like thunder reverberated off the buildings around them. Traffic came to an abrupt stop with a series of metallic crunches as a crack opened along Illinois Street. "I guess we'll do the same thing here," he added.

Gary clapped him on the shoulder. Who knew when he'd see Chuck again, even if he got back home in one piece? "You're a good guy. Don't forget that."

Chuck rolled his eyes. "Yeah, as good as dead if you don't get out of here." He set off across the intersection, dodging the stopped cars and the drivers climbing out of them, their expressions varying from dazed to irate. 

"I'm not sure if I want you to be right or not," Marcia said. 

Gary didn't know how to respond to her, this version of Marcia who'd taken a leap of faith he hadn't believed her capable of. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, her world was about to get a whole lot stranger. "Nothing like a little supernatural shakeup to spice up your marriage, huh?" Her bark of a laugh was incredulous and choking. "Don't worry, I'm going to find a way home. I'm sure your guy is trying at least as hard to do the same."

She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. 

"What's that for?"

"You're a good man. Both of you. I'm glad I got to see it."

"I just hope I'm good enough to get home before anyone gets hurt." He looked to the intersection, where a group of motorists was heading toward the parking garage, probably thinking it would provide shelter. Given where he was guessing he needed to be, it seemed like the worst place they could go.

"What can we do to help?" Marissa asked.

"People here don't know what to do in an earthquake," he told her. "And I don't know how long it'll take Tagliotti's reinforcements to get here in this gridlock. We need to get everyone away from the L tracks and that garage. Herd them away from the epicenter of this thing." Sirens sounded a few blocks away. He rested a hand on Marissa's shoulder and looked at Marcia. "Can you two direct them down toward the fire station?" 

"Will do," Marcia said. "I'll take the other side of the street, Marissa, if you want to work this one."

Marissa nodded. Marcia headed off across Illinois, waving lost-looking drivers and pedestrians ahead of her. 

"Turn ninety degrees to your right, then straight ahead," Gary told Marissa. "Get across Franklin as fast as you can, and tell anybody you run into to head east with you down Illinois. And listen," he added. "Whatever happens, thank you. You pretty much saved my life in this place."

She turned her face to him, and for half a second he thought maybe she could see him. Or maybe she was seeing through him, which she'd always been able to do. "You certainly changed mine," she said with a strained smile. "Take care of yourself, Gary Hobson." Sweeping an arc with her cane, she stepped out into the street, shouting, "Everybody get clear! This is not a drill!" Miraculously, people listened. A mother with two young children took their hands, followed her across the street to the parking garage, then kept going east, away from the tracks.

"You're doing great!" Gary called after Marissa, who raised her free hand in a wave. He watched until the crowd she'd gathered around her swallowed her in their movement down the street. At least they were headed in the right direction.

When he turned back, Cat had vanished again. Of course. Tagliotti was ping-ponging between calls on her handheld and questioning Tess. About what, he couldn't hear, but he could guess. When a pair of uniformed officers finally reached them on foot, Tess took advantage of Tagliotti's distraction to step away and pull the paper out of her back pocket. Gary started toward her, but the ground gave another lurch. A groan issued from the girders holding up the L tracks, reminding him that he ought to be looking for an opening in the membrane that separated him from his home universe. Whatever the hell that looked like.

Despite Marcia and Marissa's efforts, the streets were becoming more crowded as people poured out of the buildings framing the intersection. There was also a steady stream of bag and briefcase-carrying commuters headed toward them from the Merchandise Mart stop a block to the south. "Thank you, Chuck," he muttered under his breath.

"Hey, Kreskin!" Tagliotti called. "What do you want me to do with all these people?"

"Get them out of here!" Tess responded. She grabbed Gary's arm and pulled him to the handful of steps leading up to Gene and Georgetti's door. " _All_ of them. You, too." Her consternated frown didn't ease when Tagliotti turned to give orders to the uniformed cops. 

"What about you?" Gary asked her. "Last thing this city needs is you getting hurt."

She held out the paper. "You need to see this."

"I already read it. I know."

"No, you don't." She thrust the paper at him again, open to an inside portion of the story. 

The first thing he noticed was the photograph. A shape on the ground on the north side of Illinois Street, the edge of a red sign that had fallen, framed by a row of yellow bulbs. The photo was black and white but he saw the sign in color because he knew it so well, just like he knew the portion of a letter he could make out was the top of an M. "That's McGinty's sign."

The story, continued from the front page, read, "…among the buildings damaged by the earthquake was a local bar and grill. At least one person, identified as former CPD Detective Marion Crumb, was crushed by falling debris." The article went on from there, but Gary stopped, looking up at Tess. 

"That's the bar you said you lived in, the one in the old book, isn't it?" she asked. Her sharp gaze pierced right through him. "And this Crumb person, he's the dead guy you were talking to the cop about. He's not dead where you are, is he?"

If she'd put all that together in a matter of seconds, Gary thought through the layer of numb shock that had settled on his brain, she was more than smart enough to handle anything the paper would throw at her. "Yeah, it's my bar. And Crumb's my friend. Where I come from, he's alive." He had to make sure Crumb stayed that way. Where the hell was Cat? "This—this is my paper."

"Which means I have no idea what's going to happen _here_ ," Tess growled. 

"You know enough." He waved an arm at the intersection, where the cops were making some headway in clearing people away from the tracks. He just wasn't sure it would be enough. "If you get everyone away from me, they'll be safe."

Tess's thick eyebrows knitted into a solid line of frustration. "What are you going to do?"

He jabbed at the photo of McGinty's downed sign. "I'm going to get back there, so Zeke Crumb doesn't die."

* * * * *

"The two trains collide over Illinois and Franklin," Chuck told Marissa. The cat licked Gary's hand, as if it was satisfied something—Gary had no idea what—had been settled, and hopped off the table, then double-timed it toward the front entrance. "Right over our heads."

"He's trying to get back here." Marissa worried a napkin to shreds. "He wants to come home."

Gary looked around the bar, at the workers and customers and Crumb, who'd fixed their table with his cop's scrutiny despite the phone he held to his ear; looked outside, where the block glass windows distorted the figures of pedestrians and cars, everyone going about their business without any clue of what was about to happen. Like he'd been doing a few days ago. Some of the pedestrians were probably headed for the L. He had to stop the accident. His head throbbed even more. "This is going to happen because I tore the fabric of space and time."

"Yes," Chuck agreed.

"By being in the—"

"Wrong place at the right time," Chuck said in almost perfect unison with Marissa's, "Right place at the wrong time."

"That rip in the universe must be getting bigger, like the nerds said." Chuck shook his head. "Been nice knowing you guys." 

"Don't talk like that," Marissa said. "We're going to get this Gary home and our Gary back. Neither one of them is turning into scar tissue, and nobody is going to die. That's final."

"It says right here forty-seven people are going to die. I can't let that happen, but what the hell am I supposed to do?" Gary slapped the paper on the table and sat back against the bench. He could never live with himself if it did. "Against one guy with a gun, I barely had a chance, but this is an act of God. Even the insurance companies would say so. It's too far out of my league. I told you, I can't be him."

"Pretty sure he wouldn't know what to do, either," Chuck said. "He never does, when shit gets this bad."

"That's why we're here," Marissa said.

"So which of you knows how to stop an L train? No, _two_ of them, one of which is in another universe?" Gary asked.

"Crumb," Chuck and Marissa said together. 

"He has connections. He'll know who to call to shut the trains down," Marissa explained. "From there, we break it down into smaller steps. If you can't stop the trains, get the people out of them."

After the standoff the day before, Gary didn't doubt Crumb's ability to deal with authorities. "I need to get out there," he told Chuck and Marissa. "If I can clear the intersection, maybe stop people from getting on the train, we can at least cut down on the number of deaths."

Marissa put a hand on his arm. "If this happens because you and our Gary are both in the same place at the same time, won't you be making it worse?"

"Maybe." He tried to focus his thinking, to figure out the right thing to do, but the headline, still gripped in his fist, was shouting at him. "Why would he show up here?"

"McGinty's is his home," Marissa said.

"But there is no McGinty's where I'm from."

"Doesn't matter," Chuck said. "He loves this place. He's probably sensing it like it's putting out the bat signal. Maybe that's what my show needs."

"And if he knows people will be hurt, no matter where, he'll run toward it," Marissa said.

"Even if that's what causes the problem?"

She nodded. "Especially if he thinks he's to blame."

"Okay, here's the plan." Chuck pounded his fist on the table. "Marissa, you talk to Crumb, see if he can stop the trains and evacuate the Merchandise Mart station. Gary and I will take care of the ground level." He tugged Gary's arm off the paper. "The picture here looks like a parking garage is partially collapsed when the train falls on it. Let's get everyone away from that, for starters."

"Yeah." Gary got up, took a step, then froze. "Wait—what did you say?" 

"A parking garage collapses."

"But there is no parking garage at this intersection," Marissa said.

Gary opened the paper, not caring that Crumb was making his way around the bar, honing in on the table like a laser beam. "Not here," Gary said quietly, noting the intersection listed in the caption. Chuck stood and read it too. "But where I come from, there is one. Kaddison's."

There was a heartbeat of silence as they all reached the same conclusion before Marissa pointed out the obvious. "But that means this paper is from your reality, not ours."

"Since when? Everything we saw in here today has been from this universe," Chuck said.

"It's not now. Which means—" Marissa gulped. 

"The paper got through?" Gary asked.

"The paper got through," Chuck confirmed. "Or at least the stories in it did." 

"That means I can get through." Gary knew, now, why he had to go out into whatever was about to happen. "We need you," he told Crumb as he reached the booth.

"Well, yeah, you guys couldn't make it to a kiddie parade without me. Or you two wouldn't," he added, wagging his finger between Gary and Chuck. "What's going on?"

"We need you to call anyone you know who has a snowball's chance of stopping the L trains," Gary told him. "Specifically, the trains that use the tracks across the street."

Crumb glanced down at the paper in Gary's hand, then har-rumphed and looked away from it, over at Marissa. "What reason should I give them?"

"The earthquakes," she said. "Tell them the earthquakes have made the tracks unstable."

"Better yet, tell them there's a bomb on one of the trains." Chuck bounced on his toes, as if he was proud of himself for coming up with the idea. "That ought to work."

"I am not," Crumb said, jabbing a finger at Chuck's chest, "calling in a bomb threat."

"Tell them whatever you want. Just stop the trains," Gary said. Crumb's jaw worked for a second, but he stomped back to the bar without a retort.

"Let's go, buddy." Chuck headed for the front entry, but Gary waited for Marissa to slide out of the booth. 

"I want you to stay here," he told her.

"Oh, no. You are not doing this, not now. You need all the help you can get."

"I do, and that's why I need you to get everyone out of here. Customers, staff, Crumb. Send them down the block, across the street, away from the tracks. You go, too." He tried to remember the landmarks, something in the opposite direction of the L tracks. "You know the fire station a few blocks down on Illinois?"

"Of course I do, but aren't we safer inside?"

He gave the paper a shake so she could hear the pages rustle. "According to this, the L's going to jump the track right over our heads out there. This picture, Marissa, it's—half the parking garage is the landing pad."

"But that's your universe, not this one."

"The two are getting a little too close for comfort. If the paper that belongs there can cross over, so can I. Maybe trains and L tracks can, too. If something that big breaks through into this reality, anyone in the bar is in danger of getting hurt, and I don't want that happening to anyone." He gave her arm an awkward pat. "That includes you."

A faint smile played at one corner of her mouth, then was gone. "What are you going to do?"

"Try to get home. I think if I can find the tear or the rift or whatever it is and go through it, all these earthquakes will stop, no matter where I end up."

"You're a good person, Gary, you know that?"

"Despite my best efforts. Clear this place out."

"Be careful out there, okay? You have to save what you love, but try not to get hurt doing it." She found his hand and gave it a squeeze, then let go.

"I know a little better what that is now. Thanks," he said, and trusted she knew what he was thanking her for. 

He followed Chuck out the front door, where the sunlight stabbed at his eyes. "I don't see anything weird, do you?" Chuck wiggled his fingers. "What about your silver light?"

"I don't see it," Gary said, but at that moment the ground beneath their feet rolled as if a wave had gone through it. He reached out and steadied himself with a hand on a light pole; Chuck steadied himself with a hand on Gary. Cars screeched and stopped while pedestrians cursed and stumbled. Just overhead, the L tracks swayed with an eerie, throttling squeal. 

It lasted only a handful of seconds. When it stopped, there was a moment of complete silence, followed by a cacophony of confusion.

"We have to get people off the platform." Chuck started across Franklin Street. Gary took a step after him, then realized he'd dropped the newspaper. He went back to the lamp post and reached past a pair of hurrying Doc Martens to pick it up. It had landed open to a page with a list of the injured and dead. There were a handful of pictures. One of them was Chuck's.

"Gary! You coming?" Chuck called from amid a knot of stopped cars and trucks. 

He opened his mouth to warn him, but something struck him: he knew that picture. It was the headshot Chuck had used on Strauss and Associate's website. Gary had supervised its creation six months ago. Next to it was another photo, one taken at the scene of the L disaster. It showed a red BMW parked in front of Gene and Georgetti's that had been crushed under a collapsed section of L track. 

"Local stockbroker Charles Fishman was killed when tracks fell on his car," the caption read. But it wasn't Chuck's car. It was Gary's.

"What is it?" Chuck had made his way back to his side.

"Nothing." Gary folded the paper so Chuck couldn't see it. "Nothing, I—I just need to get back home and help the people in this paper, like Marissa said. You get everyone off the platform. I'm going to see if I can find that light again."

"And if you do?"

"I'll go into it and hope for the best." It had to be the way home. If not, how could he save his own best friend? Who could only be in this spot, in his car, if he'd somehow forgiven Gary enough to work with that other version of him. But even if he hadn't, Gary wasn't about to let him die. "Look, Chuck, if this works, or even if it doesn't, tell them thanks. Marissa and Crumb. You, too. Tell them—tell them I'll remember them."

Chuck squinted at him. "Yeah, man, it's been real. Real weird. Are you sure you're doing the right thing?"

He pointed at the northeast corner of the intersection, where silver light shimmered in between the stopped cars. For the first time in days, he was sure. 

"Where's a camera when I need it?" Chuck held his hands out, pleading with the universe. Universes, Gary thought. 

"You be careful, buddy." After a last clap on Chuck's shoulder, Gary started into the light, reaching out for home.

* * * * *


	33. Chapter 33

_In time you'll see that some things_   
_Travel faster than light_   
_In time you'll recognize that love is larger than life_   
_And praise will come to those whose kindness_   
_Leaves you without debt_   
_And bends the shape of things that haven't happened yet_   
_~Neil Finn_

 

* * *

Clutching the paper— _his_ paper—tight in his grip, Gary searched the crowds for any sign of a shimmering light, any rip in reality, any way home. "You see anything?" he asked Tess. She shook her head. He was about to give up and just go stand on the crack that had opened down the middle of Illinois Street when an orangish blur on the curb caught his eye. Cat streaked past them, into the snarl of stopped traffic on Franklin Street. Toward the parking garage. He'd already taken a step that way when the rumble of an approaching train shook the L tracks overhead and brought him up short. He looked back at Tess, who stood frozen, her arm still outstretched. 

"Tess." He came back and gripped her shaking elbow. "You know the thing about oxygen masks on airplanes, right? How you have to save yourself before you can help anyone else? That's true for you, too."

Her harsh laugh seemed to shake her out of her paralysis. "I'm sure that's what you do."

"I don't have a kid to worry about. Get out of here. You've done what you needed to." The train had halted, probably at the Chicago Avenue stop just to the north. "Tagliotti and the CTA will keep the train from coming this way."

"They can't stop a train coming from another dimension."

"I can, if I go home. But I want to be sure you make it through this." He turned her so she faced west down Franklin, away from the tracks and the parking garage. "Go that way. Don't look back."

She wrenched herself free from his grip. "You go, and all this stops. So go."

"Right, but—" Another quake shook the world. 

Tess pointed over his shoulder. "There's your door."

Silver pulsed in front of the entrance to the parking garage. The few stragglers who hadn't followed Marcia and Marissa toward the fire station scattered away from it, running toward the crowds heading down the steps from the Merchandise Mart L stop. The girders holding up the tracks let out a metallic groan, and then the tracks themselves grumbled. 

Gary tried again to push Tess in the safest direction, but she ducked him and headed across Illinois instead, urging the new wave of humanity, which included a woman with a double stroller, away from the tracks.

Despite the noise, Gary heard Cat's yowl from near the parking garage entrance. Ready or not, it was time to go home. But if Tess didn't get clear, if she died—

He hesitated at a new, terrifying thought. Was that the paper's purpose for all of this? Not for him to help Tess cope with it, but to get that other version of himself ready to be the paper's recipient because she wasn't going to survive?

"Tess!"

She half-turned as she helped lift the stroller over the curb and waved the mother down Illinois Street. "See ya, Scooby-Doo!"

He heard it—felt—a train jolt onto the tracks a block or so to the north. Tess was right. He was the only one who could stop it, and he had to try. He owed her. Owed all of them. 

Across the street, Cat sat in the middle of the light, glowing like a furry homing beacon. Gary didn't know if the ringing in his ears was a spike in blood pressure or an effect of being so close to the fissure between worlds. But he pushed through it, launching himself into a dead run. He hit the barrier just as the train's brakes screeched overhead.

* * * * *

"Spike, come." Her dog's jingling tags told Marissa he'd jumped down from the office couch, ready for her command, but his harness wasn't on its usual peg next to her desk.

"You shouldn't be here," Crumb said from the direction of the kitchen door. 

"You called CTA and got all the staff out, right?"

"For all the good it did, yeah."

"Are they going to stop the trains?"

"They'll try." He moved closer, and his hand brushed her elbow, but he didn't grab her arm. "If Hobson's prenostification about the earthquake shaking down the L is right, we need to get gone, too. We should be halfway down the street by now."

"I'm not leaving Spike." At her snap, the dog came to her side. "Do you see his—"

"Here." Crumb slapped the harness into her hand. "Put it on, let's go." 

"You'd think you actually believe what Gary tells you." Marissa disguised her not-so-casual query, not to mention her panic over the way the world had spiraled out of her control in the space of a few minutes, with an extra adjustment of Spike's harness. "About what he knows."

"How stupid do you three think I am?" he scoffed as they made their way through the empty kitchen. "Neither Hobson is any good at hiding that newspaper." He touched her shoulder. Marissa couldn't tell if it was his version of camaraderie, or a push out the door. "Come on."

"Did you find out anything from the physicists?"

"You mean before Hobson started babbling about earthquakes? Yeah, enough to know he's the cause. If he can get away from our reality—" He choked the word out as if he still didn't believe what was happening. "—it should all go away."

"That's not enough." More than a stop to the earthquakes, no matter how dangerous they were, she wanted Gary home.

"I know," Crumb said. "Let's go."

Outside the back door, the air was a kind of wall, thick and sludgy. When they rounded the corner out of the alley, the noise from the streets around them rose to a din of skidding tires and confused shouts, which only grew worse when the ground gave another heave. Marissa reached out a hand to balance herself, and Crumb grabbed her arm. "We need to move," he insisted, ignoring the hesitation Marissa could feel in Spike's lead.

She knew what was coming; she'd felt it before. If she reached out a hand and trailed it alongside her, she could touch it: the edge of oblivion, a force that would tear her apart to fix itself.

The force, wherever it came from, would heal whole universes through violence to their smaller parts, oblivious to the individual lives that would be affected. Even though it operated for good—she believed that, she had to believe it—its path to the best possible outcome was almost diametrically opposed to Gary's. He was the champion of the little guy; he noticed and cared about the individuals the paper placed in front of him before he looked at the big picture. If the multiverse that was trying to set things right was the same force that sent Gary the paper, it didn't understand its own tool, not if it was going to kill all those people to get what it wanted. Granted, it would save millions, billions more by doing it, but Gary couldn't live with that kind of calculus.

If he lived through it at all.

She didn't realize she'd come to a stop, trying to breathe through the pressure and her own panic, until Crumb tugged at her arm. Despite two solid years of listening to her about not doing so, he hauled her down Franklin alongside McGinty's as if he were taking a suspect into custody. Spike let out a confused whine as he kept up with the quick, zig-zag path Crumb carved for them among a crowd that seemed to be moving in the opposite direction.

Another lurch of the ground threw her into the path of someone headed the other way. She let out a gasp and tripped over Spike when Crumb yanked her arm. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, but I gotta get you away from this."

"Then why are you taking me around McGinty's instead of away from it?"

He grunted, half acknowledgment that he'd been caught out, half curse, and came to a stop. "I want to see what's going on." 

Didn't he understand that she needed to know, too? She tried to keep frustration out of her voice. "Sounds like quite a crowd." 

"You ain't kidding. People are out of the buildings, out of their cars. Out of their minds." 

"Can't really blame them." Her reply was automatic. There was too much pressure, forcing her fears back down her throat. If only a wind would come roaring off the lake and relieve it.

"This is a mess," Crumb said. "Come on."

She planted her feet, heart racing. The click of the crosswalk light, a sound she was attuned to from years of navigating the city, told her they'd reached the corner of Franklin and Illinois. The ground shook worse than ever, and Spike pressed close against her. She had to shout above the honking horns. "Can you see Gary and Chuck?" 

"Doesn't matter." He made his voice even louder, throwing his advice out to the jostling crowd. "We're heading for the fire station, just like all of you should!"

"Not until I know they're okay," Marissa insisted. "Gary's close. I can feel it. I'm not running half a mile away when he's in trouble. Neither are you," she guessed when he didn't argue and his grip on her arm eased. 

"Fine. What do you suggest we do?" He tugged her toward the street, then stopped and told her what she'd deduced from the horns and infrequent _whooshes_ of air past her face: "Traffic's a mess. Most of the cars are stopped, but there's no guarantee we won't get hit if we try to cross."

The ground heaved again, and a wave of the thick, demanding air washed over her. Into her. Crumb gripped her arm tight; Spike barked. Her skull felt as though it was about to cave in on itself. Overhead, an L train she hadn't heard or felt approaching roared along the tracks. Shouts turned to screams. Marissa clutched Spike's harness with both hands, concentrating on staying on her feet. 

After an hour, or a couple seconds, or a lifetime, the shaking stopped and everything went so quiet she could hear her own ragged breath.

"It's over," Crumb said. "Right?"

He was answered by a groan above their heads and a sudden rain of—not hail. Much bigger. "Bricks?" she gasped.

"Get clear!" Crumb pushed her sideways. She stumbled, and Spike strained at his leash, trying to pull her to safety. But she needed to be there. _Gary_ needed her. She spun back around, dropping Spike's harness, and opened her mouth to shout for him, or at Crumb—but at that moment the groan turned into a screech of brick and metal tearing, the sound of McGinty's ripping apart.

* * * * *

Gary ran toward the light, holding onto the hope he'd come out the other side into a world that made sense. But a tremor interrupted his gait, and he stumbled through a wall of pure pressure into a bright void, silent except for breathing that sounded like his but came from outside him. He opened his eyes wide and tried to halt his forward progress, to see himself coming from the other side, to see the man whose life he'd overtaken for a few days, but there was nothing but light, pure and unshadowed. And in a heartbeat, a realization flooded him: he had to save Chuck. He let his momentum carry him forward, through the brain shattering pressure and into a hellish soundscape of screams and screeching traffic. Somehow he kept moving across—it was still Illinois Street, he realized, and turned around. A grey concrete parking garage rose four stories above him.

The ground gave one more sigh as it settled, and Gary lurched into two women. "Marissa!" he gasped as he nearly knocked her over, steadying them both and realizing who the other woman was. "Marcia?" Marcia with hair curling on her shoulders; Marcia with wide, kind eyes. His Marcia. 

"Gary?" she breathed.

"Hobson!" A third woman approached, hand on a walkie-talkie, the kind cops used. "What the hell just happened?"

This was his Marcia. His world, and his world's newspaper clenched in his fist. "Where's Chuck?" he demanded. 

Marcia gaped at him, but Marissa collected herself. "He went to get people off the L platform."

As if it had heard her, the length of L tracks overhead let out a groan. Everyone turned toward it. The earthquakes might be over, but their effects could still be catastrophic for anyone—or anything—caught in their wake. 

Anything, like the red BMW parked catty-corner across the street next to Gene and Georgetti's. 

"My car." Gary remembered the picture from the newspaper. "He's going to—oh, no." He left them all behind, left Marcia behind, but he couldn't let Chuck die, not even this Chuck. Especially not this Chuck. He pushed through the crowds back into the street, toward the steakhouse, toward the formerly bright red BMW that was now covered in dust and debris, toward the groaning, creaking L tracks. 

And there was Chuck, just about to cross the street and meet his doom, dressed in a button down shirt instead of the t-shirt he'd been wearing when he'd run out of McGinty's, which this guy couldn't have done because there was no McGinty's here. "Chuck!" Gary grabbed his arm before he could cross the street. "Anyone left on the platform?" When Chuck shook his head, a little wide-eyed, Gary said, "You have to get out of here. The tracks are coming down."

Chuck tried to shake him off, waving a familiar set of keys at Gary. "I gotta move your Beemer."

Gary grabbed him by the shoulders. "You are more important than any car."

"Wow, Gar, you'd think you really cared about—" He stopped and blinked. They stood on a tiny island of stillness as a group of people jostled past, herded away from the still creaking L tracks by a woman in a CTA vest. "Gar?"

"Reunion later, run now." Gary hauled him back toward the intersection, hollering at stragglers. "Get out of the way! The track's coming down!"

Somehow, people believed him and scattered. He pulled Chuck east, across Franklin and down Illinois. Just before they reached Marcia and Marissa, the ground gave a long, hideous heave. The sound of metal tearing scraped through Gary's head as he and Chuck leapt forward. The sidewalk rose to meet them as they fell. A metallic rip, as if a giant was undoing a zipper, seemed to cut the air in two. It echoed along the street and then, for a second, everything went silent. 

Coughing through a dusty haze, Gary sat up. He waited for the ground to shake again, but nothing happened. The dust began to settle, revealing a girder and a section of the L track on top of a crushed BMW. The tan sedan parked just behind Gary's car was partially crushed as well. 

Chuck sat up. His face was bruised and he was covered in dust and debris, but he was alive. "Hey. You're—" 

"The guy who belongs here, yeah. Or who used to belong." Gary glanced at the parking garage, which seemed to have escaped the violence of two different universes separating themselves mostly unscathed. Too bad, after all the damage its construction had caused. He got to his feet and offered Chuck a hand. "And I'm sorry."

Chuck shook his head with a rueful smile. "No, I meant, you came back. You came back and you saved my life. If I'd been over there—" He flung an arm toward the crushed remains of the BMW. A crowd of cops surrounded both cars, but they didn't seem to be trying to pull anyone out from under the fallen tracks. "Sorry about your car."

"It's insured."

The blonde cop he'd seen with Marcia and Marissa pushed past them, headed toward the cars. She paused long enough to point a finger at Gary. "We are not finished, Hobson. Don't leave." Before he could answer, not that he knew who she was or what she meant, she sprinted off toward the fallen tracks, leaving Gary stuttering in confusion as Marcia led Marissa to the corner where he stood with Chuck. 

"Gary?" Marcia asked.

"Which Gary?" Marissa echoed.

"Hers." Gary reached for Marcia. She searched his eyes, then took his hand. "Yours," he whispered, and kissed her. Her response was hesitant at first. She pulled back, looked him in the eyes, then sagged with relief and kissed him back, long and lingering, obliterating the noise and the mess around them, along with the longing ache he'd felt for the past few days. They broke it off when Chuck cleared his throat.

"Welcome home," Marcia said with a half laugh. "I hardly recognized you in that plaid shirt." She shifted her grip on his hand, weaving their fingers together.

"That's mine." Someone yanked the newspaper out of Gary's other hand. He turned to face a young woman drenched in sweat and covered in as much dust as the cars. "The paper. It's mine," she repeated. She looked him up and down, her mouth twisting when she saw he was holding Marcia's hand. "And you're definitely not him."

"Sorry." He wasn't sure why he was apologizing.

Her shoulders slumped, but she said, "Glad you made it back." She turned her attention to the newspaper, paging through it slowly while Chuck peeked over her shoulder. Her paper, she'd said, and Chuck, Marissa, and even Marcia hadn't contradicted her. Which meant—or at least he hoped it meant—that the damn thing wasn't his responsibility.

Not entirely, anyway. "Is everything going to be okay?" he asked the girl.

"A handful of serious injuries, but everybody lives." She stared at him, eyes narrowing. "Do you want it?"

"No. Sorry," he said again, because he wasn't sure if the offer was genuine or not. 

"Don't be." She ran a hand through her hair, gathering it and lifting it off her neck. Through the sweat and dust that covered them all, he could see a couple purpling bruises on her cheek and forehead. "He fixed it. He healed the rift."

Gary was about to correct her—he deserved at least partial credit—when he felt something brush against the leg of his jeans. Not _his_ , technically. Just like the cat whapping its tail against his shin wasn't his. It pressed its face into the girl's calf, and she picked it up, giving it an affectionate scratch between its ears.

"He was telling the truth," Marcia said dazedly. She squeezed his hand. "About the magic newspaper, and alternate universes, about all of it."

"He told you?" Gary asked.

"Of course he did," Marissa said, a little fiercely. She was doing the hard blink he'd seen the other Marissa do, and she gave a startled jump when he touched her shoulder. 

"You okay?"

"Fine. I'm glad you made it through in one piece. It means he must have too, right, Ga—Mr. Hobson?"

"It's Gary. Definitely Gary. It's nice to see you. Oh, sorry, not see. I mean, I can see—"

Her smile got a little bit more determined. "We can work on it."

"I'd like that," he told her. She was an unexpected new piece stuck in his old life, but he was pretty sure she fit. 

One of the old pieces, Chuck, was still gazing mournfully at the crushed BMW. "It's just a car," Gary told him. It was almost true. Chuck sighed. "Does this make up for McGinty's?"

"Almost," Chuck said, then shook his head. "Sorry, force of habit. Of course it does, man. Though I wouldn't say no to a beer and a round of pool, as long as you're buying." He clapped Gary on the shoulder, for all the world as if the past year hadn't happened. 

"Neither would I," said Marcia, to Gary's utter shock. What had that guy done?

"You!" A uniformed cop strode up to the group and yanked the girl with the newspaper around to face him. She dropped both the cat and the paper. "You're coming with me. I saw what you did over there."

The girl's deep voice rose to a squeak. "What are you talking about?"

"You want me to charge you with resisting arrest? Keep it up." He gave her arm a tug, indicating a squad car parked half on the sidewalk a few yards away. "Let's go."

Gary knew he should do something, but he wasn't sure what. People were returning to their cars; half of them were already trying to honk their way out of the snarled intersection, like true Chicagoans.

"Tess gets tomorrow's newspaper," Marissa said under her breath. "She needs our help."

"Yeah, okay." What would the other guy do? As if his body knew the answer, Gary let go of Marcia's hand and went after the pair.

"What, you're arresting me?" the girl—Tess—protested as the cop pushed her up against the squad car with one hand and took handcuffs off his belt with the other. "I didn't cause the earthquake, you idiot." 

"You were pushing people into traffic."

"The traffic was stopped, and I was getting them out of the way!" Tess shook off his hold and turned around, trapped between the cop and his car, but still defiant. "They would have been under the tracks if I hadn't. They would have been killed. Gary, tell him!" Her face collapsed as all hope rushed out of it. "Oh, God, you're not him. You don't know."

"I know enough." Maybe not enough to bluff his way out of this, but he could try. "Look, officer, there was a lot going on, lots of confused people."

"You calling me confused?"

"No! No, I just—I think she was trying to help. I know she was."

"You know her?"

"I—" Gary broke off at the desperate, pleading look on Tess's face, an echo of the panic he'd had to push through to get things done the past few days. "I do, yeah. She's a good kid. A little mouthy, maybe, but good."

Tess rolled her eyes, but the cop backed up, giving her some breathing room even as he said, "I know what I saw. Why would a kid want to help?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Tess snarled. 

"Look," Gary started, but the blonde cop pushed her way between him and the officer. 

"Let her go. She's telling the truth." 

The officer swiveled his stance, hands on his hips. "All due respect, Detective, I saw her push a man in front of a bus." 

Even though he towered over both women, he took another step back when the detective asked, "Was the bus moving? Was any of the traffic moving?" She glanced at Gary, and a furrow of confusion sprouted on her forehead. "If it wasn't stopped, everyone in it would have been under the L tracks when they came down. Let her go."

"Detective Tagliotti—"

"There's no one to blame this mess on," Tagliotti said wearily. She gestured to the intersection. "Go make a path for the ambulances."

The cop had one final burst of bravado. "If I find out anyone she pushed out of there is hurt because of it—"

"You'll see us in court," Marcia said from behind Gary. "Which you will be laughed out of for trying to prosecute a hero."

Something in the young woman's stance eased. She looked at Marcia, then Gary, with a mixture of surprised and rekindled hope.

"Get some barriers up so we can make room for the ambulances." Detective Tagliotti waved the other cop down the street, then turned to Tess. "I have to clean up this mess. We will talk later. Not tonight, but soon. Got it?"

"If I have to."

Tagliotti blew her bangs out of her eyes with an exasperated sigh. "We will talk, Ms. Digiacamo, about how we can work together. But only when absolutely necessary. Okay?" At Tess's nod, Tagliotti stalked off to confer with the knot of CTA officials examining the broken girder.

"Tess?" Marissa asked. "Are you okay?"

"I think I will be." Her voice sounded deep because it was hoarse and raw, Gary realized. She'd probably done a lot of shouting in the past few minutes. "Thanks," she said to Gary and Marcia both. 

"Yeah, well." Gary looked at his wife and his friends, all of whom had followed him to defend this kid. Who had a heavy responsibility, if he was putting all the pieces together correctly. "We make a good team."

Chuck punched his arm. "Good to have you back, buddy. What'd I do?" he wondered as Gary doubled over.

"Got shot there yesterday," Gary choked out, remembering the bottle of pain killers back in McGinty's. "I'm going to need something for this." 

"Let's get you home," Marcia said, but as good as that sounded, Gary's attention was drawn to the young woman with the newspaper. She had it open to the Metro section. Her eyebrows drew together as she read. 

"Hey, uh, Tess?" She looked up. "How can we help?"

* * * * *

Gary knew he'd found his way out of the wrong universe as soon as his body hit the wall of light. He wasn't nearly as sure that it was the way through to the right one. The pressure made room for him, then trapped him, leaving him so immobile he wasn't sure his heart was still beating. Time and space seemed to slow down and swirl around in the silvery brightness. Maybe this was what dying was like. If he just closed his eyes and stopped he wouldn't ever know what happened in either reality, in any reality. And if he didn't know, he wouldn't have to care.

But then he heard Cat's meow and a rustle as the paper fell from his hand. The thought of Crumb pushed him forward, though another skull-crushing barrier and back into the noise and smells of Chicago.

His ears rang. Swirls of colors resolved themselves into shapes. Gary thought for a second that Chicago had been flooded, thrust completely underwater. He could see McGinty's there in front of him, real, but not quite solid when seen through the shimmering air. Three shadowy figures, two human, one dog, stood just outside it, on the corner. One of them was right under the McGinty's sign.

He might not be able to save the building, but he could save Crumb. A final, thunderous tremor thrust him forward. He hurdled a car hood that appeared out of nowhere—given the startled look on the driver's face, so had he—and dove for Crumb, trusting the paper hadn't mentioned Marissa or anyone else for a reason.

In Marissa's case, the reason was probably Spike, who yanked her away at the same time Gary grabbed Crumb around the middle and drove him to the ground in the opposite direction. Everything slammed into focus as they hit the ground, along with the McGinty's sign and a shower of bricks and glass. The corner of the sign grazed Gary's foot, but it was Crumb who let out a string of swear words, muffled until Gary rolled off him, landing on his back and looking up at his home. A little worse for wear, but there. Solid, now. Real.

"…and what the damn ninth-level hell do you think you're— _Hobson_?" Crumb pushed off the sign and stood. "Where'd you come from?"

"Yeah." Gary blinked up at the sky, but when he turned his head, it all stayed in place. McGinty's. Crumb. Home. He took the hand Crumb held out and tried to stand, but the moment he put weight on his foot the flash of pain sent him back to the ground. "'s me."

"Of course it's you; nobody else in this town's gonna save my ass." Arms crossed over his chest, Crumb shook his head as Gary brushed brick dust from his hair. "That sign should've squashed me like a bug. Come on kid, get up."

With Crumb's help, Gary stood, more gingerly this time. A big group of people was headed toward them, coming east up Illinois. Some of them got back into cars, but most stared wonderingly at the L tracks, where a train had come to a stop, one wheel hanging precariously off the tracks. A uniformed CTA official was already up on the tracks, herding people off the train toward the Merchandise Mart stop. That had been the train he'd heard right before he came through; it had come back with him. That was one part of this disaster averted. He turned to Crumb. "You hurt?"

"I'm fine." Crumb's eyes narrowed. "You're—"

"Gar!" Someone—Chuck—plowed into Gary, thumping him on the back. "You guys okay?"

If this was home, Chuck should be in California. "What are you doing here?" This had to be home. Crumb was alive, and McGinty's was there, if a bit crumbly around the edges, and somewhere on the other side of the sign, amid all the other noises, he made out Spike barking worriedly. 

"What did you think I was going to do when your sorry butt went missing, stay in California? Hey, wait— _your_ sorry butt went missing." Chuck had him by the shoulders; instead of an oxford, he was wearing an "I Love La$ Vega$" t-shirt. He tried to give Gary a shake, but Gary planted himself with a wince at the pain that shot up from his ankle, half-afraid if he moved he'd find out none of this was real. "You sure you don't want to see Marcia right now?"

"Scar over his forehead," Crumb said. His gruff tone was belied by a grin trying to work its way out of the corner of his mouth. "And a different shirt than the one he had on a few minutes ago. He's the real thing."

Chuck's grin at that was more lopsided than usual, and Gary noticed a bruise along his jawline. "Something fall on you?"

Chuck snorted. "Nah, man, you—" He shook his head. "Never mind."

Gary tried to take it in: the chaos in the streets around them, the settling dust that made it seem like they'd been trapped in a dirty snow globe, the steady, non-moving earth, the sign at his feet, the building rising up next to them. A handful of McGinty's staff were headed up the street toward them—A.J. and Robin, Tim and Sarah. "Everyone got out?" he asked Crumb.

"Yeah, kid."

"Crumb? Chuck?" Marissa's voice rose above those of the stressed-out Chicagoans in the street. 

Chuck went around the sign. "Over here. You gotta come around this way."

She made her way to them, Spike pressed against her side to nudge her away from the sign. Gary opened his mouth, but Chuck said, "He's back! He did it. We did it!"

Marissa froze a few feet away. Spike let out another bark, but this one was more like a welcome. His tail thwapped against Marissa's legs. 

"Oh, yeah, it was all your doing, Fishface," Crumb muttered.

"Who do you think got those people off the L platform?" Chuck went on recounting his exploits, but Gary ignored him as he limped over to Marissa. 

"Hey."

"Is that you?" There was a suspicious quiver in her voice. " _Really_ you?"

"Yeah, it's me. The real thing." He ended on a grunt as she wrapped her arms around him, a little too tight for the bruising he'd taken over the past few days. 

"I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad it's you."

"I'm glad it's you, too." He hugged her back, and for a moment, everyone else went away. But then, right behind her, he saw Chuck framing a square with his hands and peering through it at them. "Are you filming this?"

Chuck chortled. "Possibly."

"What happened to our building?" Marissa asked when she finally let go. "Is everyone okay?"

Gary, who'd bent to give Spike a pat on the head, looked up at the broken windows and the spaces where bricks had fallen from the sills, like gaps in the mouths of first graders who'd lost baby teeth. "That was our sign that fell down. Gonna have to replace some glass, too. Guess you were right when you said the place would fall apart if I didn't pay attention to it."

A pained look crossed her face, but she took his hand and squeezed it as hard as she'd just squeezed the rest of him. "As long as you're home, there's nothing we can't fix."

* * * * *


	34. Chapter 34

_I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore._  
_~Cheryl Strayed_

* * *

_Dear Gary,_

_I'm sure it's strange to get a letter from yourself, but if you're home and reading this, you're an expert on strange stuff by now. There's a lot of things I could say, a lot I want to say, but you can see by the stationery I'm sitting in your wife's office, so I'll start with her._

_The Marcia you married is a good person, better than I remembered or realized. You should fight to keep her in your life. I made a mistake not telling her the truth about who I am as soon as I got here. I'm about to go in and set things right. I'm also going to tell her about the paper. It's part of your life now, even if it doesn't come to your doorstep. It will seem like a pain in the ass most days, but it can also bring you friends and give you a reason to get up in the mornings._

_I'd tell you some things about Chuck, but you know this Chuck better than I do. Keep him around if you can. Do yourself a favor and get to know Marissa. Listen to her advice, especially when you least want to hear it._

_And then there's Tess, who gets tomorrow's paper in this universe. She's going to need help from all of you in more ways than one, but let's start with the money, since I hear you're good at that. I had Chuck and Marissa make a bet today..._

Gary set the letter on his desk, smoothing its folds and remembering the day Marcia had given it to him. The day he'd come home and found so much of his life changed, most of it for the better. The handwriting was his and not his; it was like the time he'd found an old Christmas card from Grandpa Hobson in a box of photographs and wondered, before he registered the return address on the envelope, why he'd sent a card to himself. Even now, reading the letter left him with an unsettled queasiness that made him grab the edge of his desk and wait for the floor to shake.

But it didn't. Now that he'd done a lot of the things the letter had encouraged him to do, he felt more comfortable moving forward in this new life than he'd first thought he could be. He looked at his wedding photo as he twisted his ring. Marcia had been able to understand and cope with a lot more than he or anyone else had given her credit for, though she still sometimes looked askance at the paper and his efforts to help Tess with it. Especially when it involved babysitting.

_Keep your friends in your life_ , the letter ended, _no matter what you think Marcia wants. Negotiate if you have to, but you might be surprised to find you don't. If we really did switch places, then you know how badly I messed my own marriage up. I hope my hindsight isn't completely useless to you. But keep your friends in your life, and in Tess's. She's going to need all of you to find her way through the situations the paper will dump her into. She's going to make mistakes. You all will. But stick with each other and it will work out. That isn't just what I believe. It's what I've lived._

"Mr. Hobson, you have a visitor." Marissa's voice, the professional one she still used at work, startled him. 

He pushed the button on the intercom. "Our mutual friend?"

"Yup."

"Great. Send her through." After a split second's thought, he pushed the button again. "You should come, too. Get Cindy to cover the front desk."

He held his office door open for Tess, who pushed a stroller through. Lexie was awake, and she chortled happily at Gary and stuck out her tongue when he tickled her under the chin. 

Marissa followed Tess and Lexie into the office, using her cane in a cursory way. She'd gotten used to the layout since Gary had come back. He motioned Tess to the sofa across from his desk; she perched on the edge and undid the buckles holding Lexie safely in her seat. The baby kicked and continued sticking out her tongue. 

"Can I hold her for you?" Marissa asked. Tess handed the baby over and took the newspaper out of the stroller's back pocket. 

Gary leaned on the edge of the desk and asked the most important question first: "You need help with something in the newspaper?" She'd come by to get his help, or Marissa's, a few times so far. Mostly along the lines of what he'd done in that other Chicago: stopping traffic accidents, thwarting a robbery or two, and once, talking a teenager out of a car jacking. So far the cranky cop, Detective Tagliotti, hadn't been involved, but he supposed it was only a matter of time before they'd need her help again. Still, he'd been surprised how many articles he could change just by being in the right place at the right time, staring down suspicious characters or hauling someone who was about to cross the street off the curb right before a truck ran a red light.

"Just one story right now. I've got it handled." Tess flashed him a rare smile, but her hands betrayed her, twisting together in her lap. "How's your shoulder?"

"Healed up pretty well. Got a cool scar to show for it."

"Awesome." She took a computer printout on pale blue paper from the folds of the newspaper and held it up. "I got some actual good news today, and not from the paper. I finally passed my makeup classes. So that's something, even if I can't afford next semester."

"It's something great," he said, glancing down at the grade sheet. She'd done more than pass; her GPA was just shy of 4.0. "And trust me, you can afford it."

Her back stiffened; her eyebrows drew together. "I won't use the paper, not after the stories I heard from Evan and Morris." 

She'd said as much during the first conversation they'd had when he'd come back, which had happened before Marcia had given him the letter and Marissa had handed over the winnings from the race track. He still didn't quite understand her stance. If the paper was going to be this demanding, at least it could pave the way for its recipients to live manageable lives. In a way, though, it had, thanks to the other guy. 

"You don't have to use it." He turned around, pulled an envelope out of his top desk drawer, then sat down in one of the chairs next to the sofa. "When that other guy was here, he made a bet on a horse race. I put most of the winnings into a trust fund in your name." He handed her the printout of the trust's holdings. "That number circled at the bottom? That's yours. It's not enough to retire on, but if you let me manage it, it'll pay for school. And I promise not to invest it in quantum computing. Or quantum anything."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Marissa's dawning smile, and knew it wasn't only because Lexie was gnawing on her finger. Tess scanned the paper, then focused. He assumed it was on the number he'd circled at the bottom of the page. "You can even quit the diner if you want."

She let out a stunned huff of a laugh. "And leave Stan in the lurch? He'd never forgive me if I took away his daily dose of Lex." With a shake of her head, she added, "This can't be real. If it is, it can't be legal."

"My wife the lawyer made sure it is, one hundred percent, and Marissa here wouldn't get involved in something shady, right?"

"Right," Marissa said with a conspiratorial grin.

"This is something the other guy wanted to do for you, so I figure if you trusted him, you can trust his motives."

"He didn't say anything about it, not even in his letter." Tess had been circumspect about the contents of that letter, and Gary had respected her privacy. He figured there were some things only the paper's true recipients shared, and he was happy to be just outside that category.

"He meant to make it easier on you. You have important work to do. I want to help you any way I can, and frankly, this is the easiest thing I can do. Make more money with the bit of money you already have."

"This is more than a bit," Tess sat back, and he could read it on her face, the same way he'd seen it before in other clients, the dawning realization of what a financial safety net meant. "I could get books. I could finish my degree. I'm just not sure about using the paper to do it."

"You didn't use the paper," he reminded her. "And technically, neither did I. I'm just the middle man."

"Technically it was Chuck," Marissa told her drily. "Ask him. He's been dying to tell you."

"But we're not supposed to. Evan said using the paper for money destroyed his life."

"Evan is safe in Cabo San Lucas." Gary knew for sure, because he'd checked. "Miserable and alone, but safe. Look, you can choose not to take the money, but if you do I'll put it in a trust for Lexie."

Lexie looked up at the sound of her name. "Bah!"

"See that? She'll take full advantage of this, even if you don't." 

"This isn't taking advantage of the paper in an unfair way," Marissa added. "You're making room in your life to do more, to help more people. And to ensure a stable future for your daughter."

Tess reached out and took Marissa's free hand, as if to steady herself. "I guess this business is all about the paper."

"Among other things, yeah." Gary rubbed his hands together and stood. "So come on, let's celebrate. I'm buying lunch."

"Hot dogs in Washington Square?" Tess asked, holding up the paper. "That vendor still hasn't learned to secure his cart."

"As long as we're back by three," Marissa said as she handed Lexie over to Tess. "I have to go to training."

"Training for what? A marathon?" Tess buckled Lexie back into the stroller.

"Eventually, maybe," Gary said with a wink. "Tell her, Marissa."

"I'm learning to work with my new guide dog," she announced.

"I thought you were at the end of some long list," Tess said.

"Turns out you can skip the wait if you can pay for the dog and the training yourself," Gary said, "and Marissa can, thanks to an anonymous sponsor."

"An anonymous sponsor who can't stop asking about it," Marissa added with a grin.

"I keep telling you, it wasn't me," Gary said. "It was all his idea."

"What are you going to name your dog?" Tess asked Marissa as they left the office.

Marissa's face lit up; she couldn't hide her delight whenever the subject of the dog came up. "She already has a name. Sunny."

The other guy had said in his letter that giving the other Marissa money to buy her guide dog was the first real thing he'd done with the newspaper. If this was what the paper and its money making potential could do, it couldn't be all that bad. Gary would just have to rein in the urge to use it for—well, for anything Chuck would, he thought as the man in question rounded the corner.

"Hey, Gar." Chuck flashed a maniacal grin at him, then turned to Tess. "How's the news business?"

"Windy, just like the city," she quipped. "So you got a share of the money, too? What are you going to do with it?" 

"Gonna open a bar. You want in?"

"Only if you make Stan head chef." 

They stopped at the reception desk so Marissa could ask Cindy to cover her lunch break, and were almost out the door when a call stopped Gary in his tracks. 

"Hobson!" Pritchard advanced on them like a drill sergeant. Gary turned to face him, putting himself between his boss and his friends. "Where do you think you're going? We have an investors' meeting at one-thirty."

"I'll be back in time. Besides, this is an investor's meeting, too," Gary told him.

"With Fishman?" Pritchard scoffed and waved a hand toward Tess, Lexie, and Marissa as if they weren't worth naming. "What in the world could they possibly be investing in?"

Gary looked from his boss to his friends, then gave Tess another wink. "The future."

* * * * *

"Three…two…one…six o'clock, and my shift's over." Crumb dropped a towel on the bar.

Gary tossed the towel in the bin they kept behind the bar before grabbing a clean one and going to work on the rest of the freshly washed glassware. "It's not like you're punching a time card."

"No, but I like to follow through on my commitments. And now that this one is fulfilled, I'm going to pack my bag and head for Idaho. Got a date with a whole mess of trout."

"But you're coming back, right?" Gary asked. "We need you around here." 

"Right," Crumb said with a snort, waving a hand at the thin crowd. It was such a slow evening that A.J. and Sarah were flirting down at the other end of the bar. "This joint is really jumping."

"I think the construction's scaring people off." Marissa sat on the stool next to Chuck's with her Braille ledger spread in front of her. Even though damage to the interior of the bar had been minimal, the noise of drills and the dust raised by repairing the exterior hadn't helped their business. 

"It's temporary," Gary assured her. "This place will look better than ever once it's done." 

"You'll be back," Chuck told Crumb from his seat next to Marissa, taking a long pull on his drink. "This city's in your blood."

"Yeah?" Crumb challenged. "What about you? What's happening to your big-deal production company out in Hollywood while you drink all our profits?"

Gary wondered the same thing. Chuck had stuck around longer than Gary'd expected him to. He shot a glance at Marissa. Her fingers stilled as if she, too, was waiting for Chuck's response.

"Yeah, well, that's why I'm celebrating." Chuck pushed his nearly empty glass at Gary and slid Marissa's ledger toward himself, breaking into a delighted grin at her exasperated huff. "I'm in negotiations to open a second office here. Turns out Illinois gives tax breaks to companies that film in Chicago. I have a couple ideas for pilots. Gonna hire some locals and see if any networks bite." He stabbed a finger at the ledger. "My crew could put this place over the top, even if we do give them the friends and family discount."

"Just so long as you're not filming anything about me," Gary muttered under his breath, trying to hide a wiggle of hope as he poured Chuck another Crownie. Who knew if he'd follow through on the plan, but if he did, it could mean he'd be around to help with the paper once in a while. 

"Don't flatter yourself, Gar. There are a million stories in this naked city, and most of them are a whole lot more believable than yours. Plus, it seems like you guys need more looking out for than I realized. You know, with the finances and stuff, since at least one version of Gar thought they needed work."

"We're doing fine." Marissa slid the ledger back. "What we need are a manager and a new bartender. But I do appreciate both of you helping out while Gary was—"

"Indisposed in another universe?" Chuck finished.

"Something like that, yeah," she said. 

"That's my cue." Crumb untied his apron and moved out from behind the bar to give Marissa a hug. "You keep these goobers in line, you hear me?"

"Of course. Catch a boatful of those salmon."

"Trout," Crumb corrected. "And I won't be using a boat. But I appreciate the sediment just the same." Gary suspected he'd used the wrong word just to tease that fond grin out of Marissa. When Crumb turned to him, they settled for a firm handshake. "You got things under control?"

"The repairs are almost done," Gary told him. "We'll hang the new sign next week."

Crumb's mouth twisted, and this time Gary was sure he'd been talking about more than the bar. But he nodded. "Good. McGinty's is too easy to miss without it."

"Easy to miss," Gary echoed as Crumb left. "You're right about that." He caught a soft smile on Marissa's face, and he made a point of brushing her fingers as he handed her a glass of zinfandel. "Six o'clock. You've earned it." 

"I gotta tell you, until I negotiate that deal to film here, I'm keeping my place in L.A." Chuck settled back in with his drink. "And maybe even afterward. The crushing disappointment of rejection is a lot easier to cope with if you take it with a dose of California sunshine and the women to whom it appeals. That is, unless you need me here."

"No, you go ahead," Gary told him. "We've got this." 

Chuck snorted, but it was Marissa to whom Gary looked, to make sure she didn't miss the "we." Apparently she hadn't, because as soon as Chuck went upstairs to pack, she asked, "Do you have an hour or so to help me go through the monthly reports? I know the paper's kept you busy since you've been back, but I still can't quite work out what the other Gary did to our accounts. He thought he was helping, but I'm not sure how some of these investments work."

Gary glanced through the paper, though it wasn't the only obstacle that had kept them from talking about the things they'd needed to since his return. Between Chuck staying in his loft and Crumb picking up extra shifts so he could hover and fuss and generally disprove everything he'd ever said—and continued to say—about not wanting to know what he so obviously knew, they hadn't had more than a minute or two alone. "I'm free for a few hours. Let's do this." 

They went into the office, where Marissa pulled up the accounts on her computer, then stepped aside so he could sit in her chair and look at it. He blinked, clicked through the portfolio and their account totals again, then sat back. "Holy shit."

She grimaced. "That bad?"

"Just the opposite. Did he use the paper for this?"

"You know, I'm not completely sure. It probably was a starting point, but between what he did tell me and what Chuck's said, I think he enjoyed working the market, with or without knowing the future. Would you be okay with it if he did?"

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, mulling it over. "You know, a week ago I probably wouldn't have been. But it's not that different from what I tried to do for Tess, and for the rest of them." He'd drawn a line in the sand about using the paper to make money after the fiasco with Marley, but now that he'd learned more about how the paper worked, and how much control he had over it, blurring that line once in a while didn't seem like such a bad idea. "The important thing is, the bar's going to be okay." 

"Can we afford to hire a new bartender?"

He laughed. "Hire two. And a manager. Because you are a resource best used elsewhere." She was hovering over him, as if she didn't quite believe him, so he handed her the headphones, made her sit down, and talked her through their new, fat bottom line. "You know how you wanted to start a college fund for our employees?" he said, thinking more of Tess than of McGinty's staff. But after all, it had been Marissa who'd given him the idea for how to help Tess in the first place. "We can do that, too."

"That's great. As long as you're willing to do some of the footwork setting it up. The red tape involved in trying to help people is pretty unbelievable." She paused while he shifted his weight onto the corner of her desk. "Are you still worried about Tess?" 

"How did you know—never mind." He tossed a treat from a dish on her desk to Cat, and one to Spike for good measure. "I was just thinking that if this guy can turn our books around like this in a day or so, he's going to make sure Tess is okay going forward, too. As long as she'll trust him."

"She trusted you, right?"

"Eventually."

"Then eventually she'll trust him. He isn't you, but he has his own good side. He just didn't have the paper to help him find it in exactly the same way you did."

"Is that why I got it in the first place? Because I'd lost some part of myself?"

She tilted her head and got that twist to her lips that meant she had more than one thing to say. What finally came out surprised him, though maybe it shouldn't have. "That's a pretty loaded question to ask your sidekick."

"You're no sidekick." He'd been ducking Chuck's broad hints about turning his story into a television series since he'd come back, but he knew she was steering them back to the conversation they'd had before he'd gone to the Gleacher Center. Before he'd…gone. "Partly because I'm no superhero."

The twist of her lips turned exasperated. "Gary, I—" 

"But mostly—" he cut in, wanting to show her he wasn't trying to avoid what he needed to tell her. "—mostly because you're more important than any sidekick, and I should have acknowledged that a long time ago. When it comes to the paper, you're a full partner." 

"Am I, though?" 

Talk about loaded questions. He got up and paced the length of the office, telling himself it was because he felt too much like a vulture, looming over her from the edge of her desk. "You are. Which you've been telling me, and trying to show me, and I've been pushing away from that for too long. One thing I figured out this last week or so is that I have better friends that that other version of me ever did, or than Tess does."

"Than she did," Marissa corrected. "You made it possible for her to have the same friends you do. Or almost the same." Her brow creased in the same perplexed way it did whenever he talked about the parallels between their universe and Tess's. 

"Mostly because from a distance I could see that what they were missing, I already had. And was ignoring." He came to a stop by the filing cabinet, leaning one shoulder against it. A hope that Cat would come and save him from any mistake he was about to make crossed his mind, but fixing what had been in danger of going wrong between him and his best friend was more important right now than any surprise story the paper might throw his way. "Look, I—I missed this place."

Marissa sat back in her chair. "This place missed you."

"But more than that, I missed the paper. I don't want to go back to not having it, to how things were two, three years ago." He took a deep breath, looking down at his hands while he said the next part, half afraid that she'd already reached the point he was aiming for and was waiting for him to catch up. "But I don't want to go back to how things were two weeks ago, either, with us fighting and—and me running away from it. And I don't want to go back to this spring, when you and Chuck both ended up in the hospital because of the paper." His voice cracked on that admission, and he did look up, only to find Marissa regarding him seriously, not smugly. It gave him the push he needed to say the rest of it. "That's why I was pushing you away, I think. Because if I lost you, that's it, I would be all alone. And I can't do this alone. No one can."

"The only way you're going to lose me is if you do push me away. Lucky for you, you haven't gone quite that far yet." She gave that a moment to sink in, but Gary felt the exact opposite of sinking; hope that he'd finally gotten it right, that they could make it better together, made the whole room seem lighter. "I know the paper complicates a lot of aspects of your life, Gary, but it's powerful, it's real magic, and I'm not afraid of that. I want to help people, too. I _can_ help people."

"You can, and I should have been letting you do more of it, instead of getting—well, scared." At her nod, he said, "You're a better listener than I'll ever be, and you're good at coming up with stories that sound halfway plausible, and at bringing people into line on the spur of the moment."

A smile played at the corners of her lips. "And I'm less of a threat than you are, and might be able to connect with some kinds of people who look sideways at a good-looking white guy sticking his nose in their business."

"Well, yeah, that too." He had to admit he hadn't thought of that before. Didn't mean she was wrong.

"I know I can't do everything, and I can't help out in some of the ways Chuck used to, or that Crumb can."

"Yeah, but you can do things they can't. If I start to forget that—"

"I'll remind you. I'm pretty sure being your sidekick—"

"Partner."

Her smile widened and warmed. "Partner," she acknowledged. "Whatever you call it, it's too much for one person. Hopefully Crumb and Chuck will both be around sometimes, but maybe you need to think about opening up this circle a little more."

"Maybe I do." He took a look around the mess that was home, at the stack of bills to pay and at Cat, who had just jumped onto the sofa next to Spike. "Maybe the universe really does know what it's doing."

"Universes," Marissa corrected, then asked with a tiny wrinkle of her nose, "Did you really get Marcia involved with the paper?"

"I think so. Like I told you, she's different than the one here." He picked up a pen off his desk and twirled it between his fingers. "You know, when I got back, I thought about calling her for a hot minute."

Marissa's eyes widened incredulously. "Your Marcia?"

He resisted the urge to tell her to keep her voice down. The last thing he needed was a lecture from Chuck about the evils of Marcia. "I thought she might be an ally, like her double back there. Like, maybe the paper was trying to tell me something about her with all this."

She waited a beat before she asked, gently, "You didn't, though, did you?"

"Nope." He spun the pen too hard, and it went spiraling through the air and hit the file cabinet. "I don't think that was the lesson I was supposed to learn where she's concerned."

She propped her elbows on the desk and rested her chin in her hands. "So what was the real lesson?"

"I think I'm supposed to let the past go, and be open to change. To something better than normal." He made a noisy show of pulling the paper out of his back pocket. "There's a couple of runaway kids hiding out in an abandoned warehouse who are going to get caught in a fire tonight, which the police suspect is part of an insurance scam, and if there's time after that I should try to talk whoever has Crumb's old beat into swinging by a laundromat in Logan Square. There's some jerk going around exposing himself to women. I could chase him away, but it sounds like this has been going on for a while. It's better if the cops catch him before he does something worse, don't you think?"

"Sure." Marissa didn't move, not even when he started for the door out to the bar.

"So what are you waiting for?" he asked, as if he didn't know.

"For you to call Chuck down to help you out." 

"Why would I do that, when I have you right here?" Gary didn't know anyone else whose face would have lit up at the prospect of dealing with either of those stories, but Marissa's did.

"Really?" 

"Really, partner." He offered her his free hand and pulled her to her feet. "You know, for the first time in a long time, I'm ready."

"For what?" 

He tucked the paper under his arm and handed her Spike's harness from the hook next to her desk. "For whatever happens next."

 

* * *

 

_I've been painting pictures of Egypt_  
_Leaving out what it lacks_  
_The future feels so hard and I want to go back_  
_But the places that used to fit me_  
_Cannot hold the things I've learned_  
_Those roads were closed off to me_  
_While my back was turned._  
_~Sara Groves_

_~fin~_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few miscellaneous things:
> 
> Tess Digiacamo came into this story long before I'd heard of Tatiana Maslany, but...she's totally who I'd cast in the role if I could. 
> 
> Thanks to my sister, who will probably never read this (and who didn't understand why I burst out laughing last weekend when we were writing at Panera, and I was struggling with revisions on the last scene, and Counting Crows's version of "Big Yellow Taxi" came up on their music system--paved paradise and put up a parking lot, indeed), for introducing me to Sara Groves's music right about the time I started writing this, thus giving the story a title, and a focus, that it never would have had without the song [Painting Pictures of Egypt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC9cKaELnG8). 
> 
> There's kind of a circular-inspiration-thingy going on between this story and [Jayne's "New World Order" vid](https://serrico.dreamwidth.org/645785.html) (which, seriously, if you have not seen it WHY NOT GO NOW). It's been a very, very slow burn, but in addition to fulfilling the most rigorous of beta duties, she gave me that gem, which got me through a lot of times I was ready to give up on this story entirely. Also, she kept me from littering this last chapter with universe-expanding ideas that are better off, for now anyway, as headcanons (which I'm always happy to chat about informally). :) Thank you, again and always.
> 
> And thanks to everyone who's been reading as I posted, and who will come along sometime in the future and make it through the whole dang thing! Knowing people who've loved the show as much as I do would eventually read this made it easier to pull up the file, on at least 3 different computers (one of which was stolen), to pick up a pen when the keyboard wouldn't cooperate, and to finally release this baby into the wild. You all make fandom so much more than "MaryKate's weird little hobby," and I'm forever grateful I stumbled into this little intersection of media, squee, and stories.


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